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Israeli rescue workers at the scene of a rocket hit in Nahariya. A woman was killed there earlier in the day. (AP)
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| By israelinsider staff and partners July 13, 2006 |
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Hotels in northern Israel sent guests packing Thursday, hospitals moved patients to their basements, schools shut down and authorities warned residents of Israel's third-largest city, Haifa, to stay near bomb shelters during the heaviest rocket barrage of northern Israel in decades.
The attacks triggered widespread anxiety across the usually tranquil northern region, where two people were killed and about 120 were wounded. Two people are critically wounded from the latest strike on Safed late thursday.
"We're living in a war zone," said Herut Tamari, 66, who runs a pottery business and a guest house in the border town of Metulla.
More than 120 rockets and mortars slammed into towns across a wide swath of northern Israel throughout the day Thursday, hitting areas that had previously been out of range of such attacks. A total of half a million Israelis were within range of the barrage. One rocket even hit the headquarters of the Israeli army's northern command.
"I am sure the residents of the north all know that all citizens, in these difficult hours, are praying for them and worrying about them," President Moshe Katsav said during a tour of the northern town of Nahariya, which was hit repeatedly by rockets.
As Katsav walked through the town, another volley of rockets landed nearby amid a group of journalists, lightly wounding one. Katsav's security detail rushed him into a nearby building.
Safed, the home of Judaism's mystical Kabbalah sect and the center of life in the region, turned into a ghost town after seven Katyusha rockets hit, killing one person and wounding eight others. The last time an Israeli civilian was killed near the border was in August of 2003 in anti-aircraft fire.
Shops shut down and the winding cobblestone streets of the old city were deserted. The sound of rockets exploding could be heard in the background.
Broken glass covered the street in the center of the town of about 30,000 and a small crowd gathered to gawk at a damaged furniture shop that was hit. An immigrants' absorption center and a college were also hit.
The only open store in the area was a grocery owned by Alain Bensadoun, who said the current barrage was worse than previous attacks in the area in the 1980s. Bensadoun's niece fainted and was taken to the hospital when a rocket exploded nearby, he said.
"I'm not scared. I'm not scared of Hezbollah or anyone. If God wants to call me, he will anyway," he said. "This is war. ... If we are not strong, it will go on forever."
The violence started Wednesday when Hezbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in attacks on Israel's northern border.
In response, Israel hit southern Lebanon with waves of airstrikes, blasting Beirut's airport and army bases in its heaviest air campaign against its neighbor in 24 years. Four dozen civilians died in the violence, Lebanese officials said.
Hezbollah threatened to expand its attacks and target Haifa for the first time ever. Hours later it followed through, hitting the city, which contains a major port and oil refinery, with two rockets. That attack, which caused no injuries, may have had the deepest impact on Israelis, leaving many across the country fearing that nowhere was safe.
After the attack, authorities told residents of the city of 270,000 to stay near bomb shelters.
Senior Israeli officials said Thursday their offensive in Lebanon was open-ended and would try to push the militants away from the Israeli border.
"We cannot allow ourselves to let them stay there," Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told Israel's Channel 10 TV.
In Nahariya, a resort town of 50,000 on the Mediterranean Sea, cars with suitcases tied to the roofs headed south after Israel's Home Front Command ordered hotels and guest houses in the north to shut down.
One women was sitting on her fifth-floor balcony in the town when a rocket hit her building, cutting through the ceiling above her and killing her.
Nahariya Hospital was put on high alert, and the deputy director, Moshe Daniel, said all elective surgeries had been canceled. Doctors evacuated the top floor and moved the patients there, most of them children, to the basement, along with dozens of women in the maternity ward.
One of the basement rooms was packed with about 30 new mothers. Doctors rushed back and forth and babies cried. Golan Elbachli, 31, stood with his wife looking into a crib at their second child, a girl.
"This doesn't affect her. She's sleeping like a queen," Elbachli said of his newborn. "Her mother, it affects."
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