• The Israel Defence Forces say their Iron Dome anti-missile system was 86% effective during a Hamas bombardment of 690 rockets on Saturday.
• The 39 rockets which did get through killed 4 people in Israel. Hamas claimed to have overwhelmed the aerial defence system by the sheer number of rockets fired.
• But the 86% success rate is not far below its recent average of 90%, suggesting that Hamas’s tactics had a relatively minor effect.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

---

Israel’s missile-defence system – the Iron Dome – blocked 86% of a Hamas rocket bombardment on Saturday, according to figures from the Israeli military.

Hamas launched 690 rockets into Israel in a concentrated barrage which killed four people Isreal’s Defence Forces said.

Spokespeople for the group claimed the strikes as a victory which managed to disrupt the Iron Dome system, which has managed to dramatically reduce the effectiveness of Hamas rocket attacks since it was deployed in 2011.

The Israel Defence Forces published the following statistics about Saturday’s strikes:

• 690 rockets were fired towards Israel.
• 410, almost two thirds of the total, hit uninhabited areas, and were not engaged by the Iron Dome.
• 279 rockets were engaged by the Iron Dome. 240 of these – 86% – were successfully intercepted.
• 39 – around 14% – made it through, and caused the 4 casualties.

In a statement on social media, Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida said the group had “succeeded in overcoming the so-called Iron Dome by adopting the tactic of firing dozens of missiles in one single burst.”

Read more:
Israel blows hundreds of thousands firing Iron Dome missile at nothing in a bizarre, costly mistake

“The high intensity of fire and the great destructive ability of the missiles that were introduced by [Hamas fighters] succeeded in causing great losses and destruction to the enemy.”

Although 39 successful rocket strikes is a lot of destruction, the Hamas tactic of mass-firing appears only to have reduced the effectiveness of the dome by a few percentage points.

According to figures cited by The Jerusalem Post, the Iron Dome has been operating at a 90% success rate since 2014, which was up from a previous rate of 75%.

According to experts monitoring missile activity in the Levant, Hamas have acquired a large number of poor quality missiles, which now allows them to let loose large flurries on Isreal.

“It’s quantity and not quality,” Boaz Ganor, director of Director of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, told The Washington Post.

“When it’s not a precise missile, it’s quite easy to prepare a rocket if you don’t really care where it’s going to fall.”

Read more:
Video shows Israel’s Iron Dome intercept a rocket over a ski resort in the Golan Heights

The violence came as Hamas representatives were in Egypt discussing under-mediation how to resurrect a currently-tested truce between Isreal and Palestine.

27 Palestinians and four Israelis were killed as a result of Saturday’s exchange, the deadliest moment in the ongoing conflict since 2014.

Follow Business Insider Australia on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.