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Scene of the fatal rocket attack in Nahariya (AP)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners July 18, 2006 |
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Hezbollah terrorists pounded northern Israel on Tuesday afternoon with a new barrage of rocket fire, killing one Israeli in the town of Nahariya, Israeli officials said.
Rockets also hit the city of Haifa, where air raid sirens repeatedly sounded, as well as the towns of Safed, Acre and Kiryat Shemona. Other missiles fell on the Gush Halav region near Safed, wounding two people, the army said.
Police said six to 10 rockets struck Nahariya, killing one man as he walked down a street toward a bomb shelter and setting fire to the top of a two-story apartment building. Firefighters rushed to the scene to put out the blaze.
"I was near the bomb shelter. There was a humongous boom, and I saw it was two meters (yards) next to my house, really two meters," Eli Dayari, a witness at the scene of the fire, told Israel's Channel 10 television. "People are panicking and the house was on fire."
Zelinsky, who had moved to Israel with his family from the Ukraine several years ago, was walking toward the bomb shelter in a public park 20 meters from his home when he was directly struck by the rocket, according to Haaretz.
When the siren sounded to warn of an incoming rocket, he insisted that his family enter the bomb shelter before him. His wife and four-year-old daughter managed to enter the shelter in time, but Zelinsky was still outside when the rocket hit, killing him. His wife, who was waiting to receive her husband at the entrance to the shelter, witnessed the incident as it unfolded, Haaretz reported.
Acquaintances said that Zelinsky, who worked in a local factory, was known as a diligent and dedicated worker, Haaretz reported.
Tuesday afternoon's first barrage was one of the more fierce to have struck Israel since the outbreak of hostilities.
Earlier Tuesday, rockets hit near the port and a railway depot in Haifa, causing no injuries. Plumes of smoke could be seen rising from where the rockets struck near the center of Israel's third-largest city. The same train depot was struck Sunday by Hezbollah guerrillas firing missiles from Lebanon, killing eight people.
Another rocket attack on Nahariya earlier Tuesday caused no injuries.
The army said a total of 50 missiles were fired at northern Israel on Tuesday, raising to 750 the number that have hit the region near the Lebanese border since Israel's offensive on July 12.
The missile attacks have forced hundreds of thousands of Israelis to take cover in underground shelters.
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