War in the Middle East: Two Iranian missiles strike southern Israel, injuring a hundred people, Benjamin Netanyahu promises to keep striking Tehran

“We are determined to continue hitting our enemies on all fronts,” Benjamin Netanyahu asserted after this spectacular double attack. Two Iranian missiles hit two cities in southern Israel on the evening of Saturday, March 21, one near a strategic nuclear research center, causing over a hundred injuries and heavy material damage. As all Israeli TVs broadcasted images of spectacular destruction and clouds of rescuers searching through the debris of buildings with collapsed facades, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged “a very difficult evening in the battle for our future.”

Schools closed on Sunday and Monday

Schools will be closed nationwide on Sunday – the first day of the week in Israel – and Monday, before school holidays, and teaching will be done entirely remotely, as was already the case in most places, Israeli government has decided. A first missile targeted the strategic town of Dimona early in the evening, known for housing the Negev Nuclear Research Center Shimon Peres, a facility that, according to foreign press, has been involved in the production of nuclear weapons over the past decades.

A missile landed on the city of Ma’ale Adumim, nearly five kilometers from the research center. Thirty people, including a boy in his early teens who was seriously injured, were reported injured by emergency services, with the army describing a “direct impact” in response to the images circulating on social media showing a fireball crashing to the ground.

Extensive damage

Images from AFP at the impact site showed a whole row of destroyed houses. Around a large crater in the ground, the earth was overturned and the facades of the surrounding buildings were largely destroyed.

The two closest buildings were blown out and collapsed on themselves. Debris of all kinds, severed trees, concrete blocks litter the site resembling a battlefield.

Saturday night’s double attack, while not the deadliest, is nevertheless the most spectacular in terms of the extent of the damage caused. And probably also the most significant in terms of the resources the Iranians still have to respond to Israeli-American bombings.