Shortly after 5:20 a.m. on Saturday morning, an Iranian ballistic missile struck the building where Yisrael Aloni, 73, lived in the central Israeli city of Rishon LeZion. His eldest son, Uri, received a phone call from the municipality’s welfare office telling him that his father had been injured and was at Shamir Medical Center.
“They didn't tell me his condition. Only later did I realize he had been declared dead at the scene,” Eran told Davar.
Hours later, Eran and his brothers Riki and Uri stood outside their father’s destroyed house. “He had no chance, he didn’t make it to the reinforced room—he had four steps to go,” Eran said.
Eran identified their father’s car, and Riki recognized the Home Front Command officer who, based on photos, had recovered the body from the rubble. “You rescued him?” Riki asked through tears. “Did you get someone out of here?”
Liat, Eran’s wife, told Davar that Yisrael “had a young soul.” “He was a barber for 35 years, with a salon in Rishon LeZion. He was a joyful man, a good father, and a good grandfather to 11 grandchildren. He loved life,” she said.
The damage from the missile strike last morning is massive. The destruction radiates out to surrounding streets. In one house, all the windows shattered, roof tiles were blown off, and door frames bent.
“We went down to the safe room, we heard the explosion but didn’t think it was so close. When I came out, everything went black—I didn’t see a single intact window,” Pnina, 67, who’s lived in the house with her partner Yossi for 14 years, said.
The power at the house also went down, forcing Pnina to charge her phone in her car, which was also damaged. She told Davar she wasn’t sure where she would sleep tonight.
“I’m 67 with health problems,” Pnina said. “I can’t go without air conditioning in this heat. Look—everything’s destroyed, the dining area, the refrigerator door, and the upper floors too. We’re worried that if we’re not here, there’ll be a wave of thefts. We’ll see what to do.”
Only media crews and rescue workers are allowed into streets that until yesterday belonged to Israel’s slowly climbing middle class. Now, members of that middle class are evacuating, taking with them whatever they can carry—a brown poodle, sentimental paintings, religious books, clothes, and photo albums. When they run out of suitcases, they toss everything into a bed sheet or blanket and tie it up.
Alongside the evacuees are city employees, Home Front Command soldiers, police officers, social workers, electric company technicians, cable workers, damage surveyors, and other professionals hard at work. Curious Israelis stand outside the fences, wanting to see with their own eyes, and to help.
On a staircase that must have been beautiful before the missile strike, beside a nearly untouched rose bush, sits a man of about 30 in dust-covered clothes. This is his mother-in-law’s house. She didn’t make it to the shelter in time and was injured in the head and leg by shrapnel.
“The whole house is gone, everything’s gutted,” he said. He lives nearby and arrived a few minutes after the impact.
“I came to calm things down and ended up staying at the scene—people were still trapped. They got my mother-in-law and her daughter out. My mother-in-law is still hospitalized. There’s not one room left intact. Some of the walls collapsed, and half the roof caved in,” he said.
Next to him are black bags with some of the belongings he managed to salvage. On the ground are shards of glass, concrete, broken tiles and shutters. “The reinforced door blew out of place,” he said.
A total of three people were killed in the strikes early Saturday morning. Additional strikes Saturday night into early Sunday morning have killed 10, with seven still missing in the rubble.
