Guerrillas fire barrage of rockets into Israel

NAHARIYA, Israel - Hezbollah guerrillas fired more than 120 rockets and mortars from Lebanon into towns and cities across northern Israel on Thursday, triggering widespread anxiety in the usually tranquil region. Two people were killed and about 90 wounded.

Hotels in northern Israel sent guests packing. Hospitals moved patients to the basement. Schools shut down. And residents of Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, were warned to stay near bomb shelters.

After threatening to attack Haifa for the first time, Hezbollah followed through within hours, hitting the city of 270,000 with two rockets. The attack caused no injuries but may have had the deepest impact on Israelis, leaving many fearing that nowhere was safe.

Two rockets hit the port of Haifa, Israel’s third largest city, in a move Israel described as a “major escalation”. There were no reports of any injuries. Haifa, home to 250,000 people, lies 18 miles from the Lebanese border.

‘She died on the spot’
The dead from the attacks included a 40-year-old woman in the coastal city of Nahariya who was sipping coffee on the balcony of her apartment complex when rockets started falling.

“It was a straight hit. She died on the spot,” said neighbor Danny Pinkus, 27, peering up at what remains of the charred balcony five floors up. “If there is another one (attack), maybe I’ll move to Tel Aviv.”

The other victim was a 45-year-old man who died of wounds sustained in an earlier attack on the town of Safed.

“We’re living in a war zone,” said Herut Tamari, 66, who runs a pottery business and guest house in the border town of Metulla.

It was the heaviest barrage of northern Israel in decades. Guerrilla rockets traveled farther than before to hit regions, previously out of range, inhabited by half a million Israelis. One rocket even hit the headquarters of the Israeli army’s northern command.

Nahariya Mayor Jackie Sabag said his city was shut down. Thousands sought safer ground in the south with mixed results.

‘The government is not doing enough’
Shimon Shecter, a 43-year-old construction worker, said he was sitting in his car at a traffic light on the road out of Nahariya when a rocket struck near his vehicle.

“I heard a big whoosh. There was a huge explosion and I saw dark in my eyes,” Shecter, who suffered shrapnel wounds to his face, said from his bed at the Western Galilee border hospital.

The hospital had moved many patients to underground bunkers to protect them from rockets, two of which hit the hospital’s outer fence, said spokeswoman Judith Jochnowitz.

Lea Kenig said she was packing up her family to try to get away when a rocket landed.

“I saw the light of an explosion and I heard a big boom,” Kenig said as she tried to comfort her wounded two-year-old son, Ofir, at the Western Galilee Hospital.

“The government is not doing enough” to protect the residents of northern Israel, she said.

Even though the metal shutters of her apartment were closed, a piece of shrapnel the size of a bullet sliced through and hit Ofir in the shoulder.

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