3 injured as fragments of Iranian missile fall in unrecognized Bedouin village

Three people were wounded Tuesday when an Iranian missile fragment impacted at an unrecognized Bedouin community in the Negev Desert, paramedics said.

The Magen David Adom ambulance service reported that a man in his 40s was moderately hurt after being hit by a blast, and a woman aged 26 and a 2-month-old baby were lightly hurt, in the village of Alsira.

The man’s condition was later described as serious.

He and his baby were taken to the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, MDA said. His wife was hurt very lightly and did not require hospitalization.

According to reports, the wounded man was himself a doctor at Soroka. He had just returned from a shift when he was hurt in the incident.

The doctor was admitted to the trauma center of the hospital, while his baby was treated in the emergency room.

Ahmed Nassara, a member of the Regional Council of the Unrecognized Villages in the Negev, told Ynet that the doctor was his nephew and had been wounded in the leg.

Footage shows the damage caused to a home in an unrecognised Bedouin community in the Negev Desert by a fragment from an intercepted Iranian ballistic missile.

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Three people were injured, including an infant. pic.twitter.com/47PIW024cY

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According to the Israel Defense Forces, an Iranian missile fired at the area was intercepted, and falling fragments likely caused the injuries.

As many Bedouin communities in the Negev are not recognized by the state, there are few public bomb shelters, and residents largely lack private protective rooms.

The incident highlighted the vulnerability of the roughly 130,000 residents of some 35 unrecognized villages.

Fragment hits rare home with shelter, family unhurt

Earlier Tuesday, a fragment from an intercepted Iranian missile hit a home in the unrecognized village of Tel Arad in the Negev and caused significant damage, according to the Arab majority Hadash-Ta’al party.

The family was one of the few in the village with a safe room; however, they were there when the fragment hit the home. None of them was wounded.

Jihad Amor, a resident of Tel Arad, told The Times of Israel that the fragment hit his uncle’s home, about 20 meters from his own house.

He said he felt “total fear” when he heard the fragment hit at about 6 a.m.

“For our neighbors in Arad, the Home Front Command arrives, and the police come. The prime minister was there. The whole world was there,” he said, referring to the recent direct missile impact in the nearby city, which saw some 90 people wounded.

“When we call the police or the Home Front Command, or the regional council, they don’t answer. No one pays attention. They don’t think of us as people, but as animals,” he charged.

In a statement following the strike, the Hadash party’s Negev branch said that the government’s neglect of the unrecognized villages reflects “an explicitly racist policy” and “blatant discrimination against Arab citizens in the Negev.”

The Abraham Initiatives organization said in a statement: “The failure of protection in the Negev costs more victims. We warned for years about the protection-gap in the Arab community in general, and the Bedouin villages in particular.”

“This war continues to expose, in a tragic way, the Israeli government’s policy of abandonment toward the Arab community. The time has come for an emergency protection plan,” it said.

Israel launched its campaign against Iran, alongside the US, to degrade the Iranian regime’s military capabilities, distance threats posed by Iran — including its nuclear and ballistic missile programs — and “create the conditions” for the Iranian people to topple the regime, the military and other Israeli leaders have said.

Since the war began on February 28, 15 Israeli civilians and foreign nationals have been killed in Israel in Iranian ballistic missile attacks, along with four Palestinians in the West Bank.