Western Wall. Photo: Wayne McLean.

In the wake of Gaza rockets launched at Tel Aviv for the first time in years, rockets were also launched at Jerusalem and the Israeli capital’s surrounding areas Friday. According to Yedioth Ahronoth, after an air raid siren sounded in Jerusalem at around 4:45 p.m., Hamas’s military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, claimed responsibility and said the rocket was a homemade Qassam M76.

“I live in the city center, in a building that doesn’t have a safe room, so I went to the staircase according to instructions,” Jonathan Nevo, a 26-year-old student of Middle East and international relations who resides in Jerusalem, told JNS.org. “I met some neighbors who thought at first that it was just a drill.”

Although this is the first time a rocket alarm sounded in Jerusalem, “the area is very connected to everything that’s happening because during the Intifada a few years ago there were a lot of suicide bombings here,” Nevo added.

Ilana Liberman, 24, and a student at the Hebrew University who has lived in Jerusalem for four years. “Me and my roommate were studying and suddenly we heard the siren… and we also heard the (rocket) fall,” she said. “We don’t know exactly where it fell but there were booms. From what I understand they didn’t open the safe rooms here, but we looked for a place to hide away from windows, so we went to the last building floor and waited from instructions from the Home Front Command to know when we could leave.”