A 51-year-old man was killed on Saturday during a Hezbollah rocket strike on the northern Israeli city of Akko. Fourteen other people were injured, including two with medium injuries and the rest with light injuries or anxiety.
Alexei Popov, a resident of the Haifa suburb of Kiryat Haim, was killed around 1:00 p.m. when shrapnel from a rocket directly struck his car just outside of Akko. “We got to the place quickly and saw a car that was damaged by a rocket falling beside it,” Orit Ohana, the first Magen David Adom paramedic to arrive on the scene, said. “In the car sat a man about 50 years old who had stopped at the side of the road and been injured by shrapnel. Unfortunately, his injury was very severe, and we had no other option than to declare his death. An additional injured person was evacuate from the scene after having gotten out of the same car upon hearing the siren.”
That same morning, a strike on the northern city of Kiryat Ata wounded nine people. Three people were hurt by shrapnel, two others were lightly wounded by the blast, and four suffered from anxiety.
Ofek Zabrov, the Magen David Adom paramedic who arrived on the scene in Kiryat Ata, described the scene. “Suddenly we hear a powerful explosion, and shrapnel flew in our direction and on the ambulance,” he said. “We returned to the ambulance and immediately headed toward the adjacent street where the rocket fell. We saw destruction to one of the buildings and a commotion of people who had exited the building. Injured people from the apartment that had been hit and from the other apartments in the building started to come to us.”
“A fully conscious man aged 28 came with shrapnel wounds in the area of his ear, neck, and limbs,” he continued. “We provided him first aid, and simultaneously a man and woman around 40 years old came with shrapnel wounds to their limbs. They were also fully conscious and in light condition. A young man and woman in their twenties were wounded by the blast and suffered injuries to their back, limbs, and hearing. We provided medical care to the five injured people and evacuated them to hospital in light condition.”
He added that four others were evacuated after suffering anxiety.
Four other people were wounded that morning when a Hezbollah rocket struck close by to a car in the Western Galilee. A 30-year-old man was moderately injured and three others were lightly injured. All four were evacuated to the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya.
This article was translated from Hebrew by Leah Schwartz.
