Palestinian militants in Gaza fired a rocket which crashed into southern Israel on Monday without causing casualties or damage, a military spokeswoman said.

"The rocket exploded in an uninhabited zone of the Eshkol region," she said.

Meanwhile, Gaza-based Palestinian gunmen opened fire with automatic rifles on Monday evening on cars in southern Israel without causing any injuries, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.

"The gunfire targetted cars in the Yad Mordechai kibbutz. There was material damage," he added.

An army spokesman confirmed the shooting and said a building was damaged.

Tensions regularly flare along the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, with Palestinian militants firing rockets into the Jewish state and the Israeli military launching retaliatory air strikes on the Palestinian territory.

A flare-up in violence in June saw dozens of rockets fired into Israel and 15 Palestinians killed in air strikes, until a return to the tense truce.