“We are determined to continue to strike our enemies on all fronts,” said Benjamin Netanyahu after this spectacular double attack.
Two Iranian missiles struck on Saturday night, March 21, in two southern cities of Israel, one near a strategic nuclear research center, causing over a hundred injuries and heavy material damage.
While all Israeli TV channels broadcasted images of spectacular destruction and clouds of rescuers searching through the rubble of buildings with collapsed facades, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged “a very difficult evening in the battle for our future.”
“We are determined to continue to strike our enemies on all fronts,” he said.
Schools closed on Sunday and Monday
Schools will be closed nationwide on Sunday – the first day of the week in Israel – and on Monday, before the school holidays, and teaching will be done entirely remotely, as was already the case in many places, decided the Israeli government.
A first missile hit the strategic city of Dimona early in the evening, known for housing the Negev Shimon Peres Nuclear Research Center, a facility that, according to foreign press, has been involved in the production of nuclear weapons over the past decades.
A missile landed in the neighboring city, about five kilometers from the research center. Thirty people, including a boy around ten years old critically injured, were reported injured by emergency services, with the army describing a “direct impact” in comments on images shared on social media showing a fireball crashing to the ground.
Significant damage
AFP images at the site of impact showed multiple houses destroyed. Around a large crater on the ground, the earth was overturned and the facades of nearby buildings were largely destroyed.
The two closest buildings were blown out and collapsed on themselves. Debris of all kinds, severed trees, concrete blocks littered the site, resembling a battlefield.
Saturday night’s double attack, while not the deadliest, was nonetheless the most spectacular in terms of the extent of the damage caused. And probably also the most significant in terms of the resources Iranians still have to respond to Israeli-American bombings.
