Debris from the overnight Iranian missile barrage filled the streets of Rehovot in central Israel on Sunday morning. Bloodstained bandages and white surgical gloves lay by a roadside bench. Rescue workers picked through shattered glass, searching for survivors.
“Is there anyone inside?” a police officer shouted, peering into a shop damaged by the strikes.
Israelis were waking up — if they had managed to sleep between recurring air-raid sirens — to more significant casualties after the second night of fighting with Iran, which began on Friday with a surprise Israeli attack on Tehran’s nuclear program and military leadership.
At least 10 people were killed across the country, including women and children, and many wounded after Iranian missiles managed to evade the country’s sophisticated air defenses and strike in Rehovot; Bat Yam, just south of Tel Aviv; and Tamra, an Arab town in northern Israel.
Scores of people were injured, most of them lightly, in the powerful blasts, according to the Israeli authorities. Six were seriously wounded and another 22 were deemed to be in moderate condition, according to the Israeli government.
In Bat Yam, the Iranian missile barrage devastated a multistory apartment complex, killing at least six people and wounding many others, according to the Israeli authorities. On Sunday morning, orange-vested emergency workers were making their way through the rubble to search for those still unaccounted for.
Michael Guberman, 22, described seeking shelter alongside his father in a shared bomb shelter on the sixth floor of the apartment complex. The wail of air-raid sirens had died down when suddenly, everything shook, he said.
“There was a huge explosion,” said Mr. Guberman, clutching their pet dog. “The door flew off its hinges.”
The shelter was suddenly dark, full of choking dust and the sound of screaming, Mr. Guberman recalled.
Paramedics arrived to help them navigate, slowly, out of the damaged building. In the light from emergency workers’ flashlights, Mr. Guberman said he could see blood on the floor.
“I still can’t believe that this was real, that this happened,” he said.
Five of the people killed in the strike in Bat Yam were Ukrainian nationals, including three minors, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Sunday. Bat Yam has a large community of immigrants who moved to Israel after the fall of the Soviet Union.
In Rehovot, a missile strike wounded around 40 people and heavily damaged buildings, according to Magen David Adom, the country’s emergency service. A research center at the Weizmann Institute of Science, a prominent Israeli university, sustained severe damage and caught fire.
Israel has some of the world’s most-sophisticated air defenses, leading to relatively low casualties from rocket fire and drone attacks — given the thousands of projectiles fired by militant groups since the war with Hamas began in October 2023.
One side effect has often been public nonchalance about such attacks. But the ballistic missile fire from heavily armed Iran is both harder for Israel to intercept and more dangerous when it manages to evade the country’s defenses.
Residents of Tamra, an Arab town in northern Israel, mourned three women and a girl on Sunday — all members of the same family — killed in the attacks after an Iranian missile directly struck their home, reducing much of it to rubble.
Manar Khatib, 41, was killed alongside her two daughters, Shada Khatib, a 20-year-old law student, and Hala Khatib, 13. Her sister-in-law, also named Manar, was killed as well. Ms. Khatib’s husband, Raja Khatib, survived alongside their third daughter.
Yassin Wahid, 63, a neighbor, stood in the ruins of his own destroyed home just yards away from where the missile had landed. Still visibly shaken, he recounted how he and his wife had taken shelter in their safe room, and later emerged to see “the neighborhood torn apart.”
At about one-fifth of Israel’s population, the country’s Arab minority — many of whom identify as Palestinians — often finds itself caught in the middle of broader conflicts. Many oppose Israel’s war in Gaza, as well as the ruling coalition government, which relies heavily on the Jewish far-right. But they are also in the line of fire in attacks on Israel.
“We’re stuck between the hammer and the anvil. What happens to the Israelis happens to us,” said Abdallah Hijazi, 47, whose wife and daughter were lightly injured in the blast.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel toured the scene in Bat Yam on Sunday afternoon flanked by aides. He gave a brief statement arguing that the Iranian missile attack strengthened his justification for the Israeli government’s offensive launched against Iran on Friday: that Iran’s nuclear ambitions were an existential threat.
“That is why we have embarked on a war of salvation against a double threat of annihilation,” Mr. Netanyahu said.
In Bat Yam, Eldad Albow, a 47-year-old father of two young girls, struck a conflicted note about the campaign against Iran. Mr. Albow’s home — just a few dozen yards away from where the missile hit — was damaged by the blast.
“My older daughter understood what was happening a bit more. My youngest was hysterical; even now I don’t think she can grasp it,” said Mr. Albow, sitting in a school gymnasium where evacuees had gathered.
Like many Israelis, Mr. Albow was broadly supportive of Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to launch the attack. He said he hoped that Israel would attack even more aggressively if possible to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.
But he also wondered aloud whether the government had fully thought through its decision to go forward given what appeared to be U.S. reservations. Many experts think Israel needs American backing to fully root out Iran’s nuclear sites, some of which are deep underground.
“It might be better to say at that point: We both got blows in, let’s wrap it up,” said Mr. Albow. “Otherwise we’re in for even crazier and more dangerous days.”
“We’re still waiting to see what happens tonight,” he added.
Constant Méheut contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine.
Aaron Boxerman is a Times reporter covering Israel and Gaza. He is based in Jerusalem.
Gabby Sobelman is a reporter and researcher for The Times, covering Israeli and Palestinian affairs, based in Rehovot, Israel.
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