By Turgut Alp Boyraz

JERUSALEM

 An air-raid siren that went off in northern Israel on Thursday was a "false alarm," an Israeli army official has said.

"It was a false alarm; there is nothing," the official, asking not to be named, told Anadolu Agency.

Air-raid sirens had gone off earlier Thursday in Israel's Hof Ashkelon regional council near the border with the Gaza Strip.

It was the second false alarm this week after sirens went off in the same area on Monday.

Tension remains high in the region following Israel's recent 51-day military offensive against the Gaza Strip, which left more than 2,100 Palestinians dead and nearly 11,000 others injured.

The military onslaught, initially launched with the stated aim of ending rocket fire from the coastal enclave, finally ended on August 26 with an open-ended cease-fire deal between Israel and Palestinian resistance factions.

According to Israeli figures, 67 Israeli soldiers and five civilians were killed over the course of the operation – the highest military death toll suffered by Israel since it lost 119 troops in its 2006 war on Lebanon.

In 2008/09, over 1,500 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip – and much of the territory's infrastructure destroyed – during Israel's three-week-long "Operation Cast Lead."

www.aa.com.tr/en