Reuters

An Israeli explosives expert carried the remains of a rocket that landed near the town of Kiryat Shimona on Sunday.

JERUSALEM — At least one rocket fired from Lebanon fell in northern Israel on Sunday, without causing damage or injury, and Israel responded with artillery fire, according to the Israeli military, in the latest disruption of a fragile cease-fire that has kept the area largely quiet for the last seven years.

The Israeli military said that five rockets had been fired and one appeared to have landed in an open area near the Israeli border town of Kiryat Shimona. The military said it fired dozens of shells toward the source of the rocket fire.

The attack came about two weeks after a Lebanese Army soldier fatally shot an Israeli soldier who was driving along the Israeli side of the border, after which Israeli forces fired back into Lebanon. The Israeli and Lebanese authorities and United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon described the killing as the individual act of a rogue soldier and quickly worked to defuse tensions.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Sunday's attack, though those in recent years generally appear to have been the work of small militant groups in Lebanon rather than of Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese Shiite militia that fought a month-long war with Israel in 2006. Lebanon's official National News Agency reported on Sunday that Israel had fired several shells into Lebanese territory after the rocket attack.

In August, four rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel for the first time in two years. A militant group called the Brigades of Abdullah Azzam, an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq, claimed credit. Israel responded to that attack by bombing what military officials here described as a "terrorist site" between the Lebanese cities of Beirut and Sidon.

The Israeli military said on Sunday that it had filed an official complaint to Unifil, the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, about the latest rocket attack.

"This attack is an inexcusable, unacceptable blatant breach of Israel's sovereignty," Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, said in a statement, adding that such rocket attacks jeopardized the lives of civilians in northern Israel.

The recent events along Israel's border with Lebanon have coincided with increasing restiveness and deadly clashes along Israel's border with Gaza and an uptick in Israeli-Palestinian violence related to the West Bank, unnerving people on both sides at a delicate time when the Israelis and Palestinians are engaged in a difficult round of American-brokered peace talks.

Late Saturday, the Israeli authorities released a list of 26 long-serving Palestinian prisoners who are scheduled to be released late Monday from Israeli jails as part of the peace process. Most of the prisoners were involved in attacks on Israelis and have already served sentences ranging from 19 to 28 years for crimes perpetrated prior to the Oslo peace accords of the mid-1990s.

The release of prisoners is an emotional issue for both sides. As with the previous two releases, the upcoming one is expected to be accompanied by an Israeli government announcement about the construction of more than a thousand new homes in West Bank settlements, a move that Palestinian and Western officials have warned could set off a new crisis in the peace talks.