Screen shot of Qassam rocket that hit Sderot March 21, 2013. Photo: JN1.tv

Four Gaza rockets were fired at Israel on Thursday, with two of them landing in the often rocket-battered city of Sderot, during the second day of U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to the Jewish state, Reuters reported.

One of the rockets exploded in the courtyard of a home in Sderot, a city Obama had specifically mentioned during a news conference on Wednesday in Jerusalem. He visited Sderot in 2008 as a presidential candidate.

“I’ve stood in Sderot, and met with children who simply want to grow up free from fear,” Obama said Wednesday. “And flying in today, I saw again how Israel’s security can be measured in mere miles and minutes.”

The Sderot resident whose home was hit by a rocket, Yossi Haziza, told Israeli Army Radio, “We will get through this. I only hope that Obama sees what the people here are going through.

A Hamas-Israel truce last November had ended an eight-day conflict between the two parties that saw about 1,500 rockets launched on Israel from Gaza, prompting a response by the Israel Defense Forces dubbed Operation Pillar of Defense. Gaza rockets during that conflict fell in the vicinity of Tel Aviv for the first time since the 1990s Gulf War and in the vicinity of Jerusalem for the first time ever.

A research team in the Health Sciences Faculty at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) recently released a study that revealed a significant correlation between pregnancy stress and miscarriage among women in Sderot. Of the 1,132 pregnancies examined in Sderot, only seven of the women had never heard a rocket-warning siren.