In Arab town where 2 were killed by Hezbollah rockets, leaders demand shelters

MAJD AL-KRUM, Western Galilee — At 2 p.m. on Friday, Orjwan Manaa, 24, called her mother and said that she was on her way to the local supermarket, a popular stop on the main road in Majd al-Krum, where she worked as a cashier.

At 3 p.m., the terrorist group Hezbollah fired a salvo of rockets from Lebanon.

Orjwan always called her mother, Areej, after rocket attacks to make sure that she was okay. This time, Orjwan didn’t call.

“I had the feeling something was wrong,” Areej told The Times of Israel this week. “I tried and tried calling her, but she didn’t answer.”

One of the rockets slammed into the road right next to the side of the supermarket.

Orjwan was standing near the cash register and didn’t have time to run to the side of the parking lot to the makeshift shelter: two large concrete drainage pipes with sandbags on each end to protect against shrapnel.

The second fatality was Hasan Suad, 21, from the neighboring Arab town of Deir al-Asad, who had stopped by the store. Seven additional people were wounded in the blast, taken to Galilee Medical Center, and later released.

A dangerous situation

Alaa Kdah, the assistant mayor of Majd al-Krum, said that 30 people at the store managed to reach the pipes, which are used throughout the city to bolster the six official bomb shelters the IDF Home Front Command has deployed to the town of 16,000.

“Six shelters? What a joke,” said Kdah. When alarms signal incoming rocket attacks, Kdah said, people have less than 30 seconds to take cover.

The town’s leaders decided “to think outside the box,” he said, and a local builder lent them the 20 drainage pipes they have set up around the town.

During the October 25 attack, “We saved 30 people from all religions,” Kdah said. “Muslims, Druze and Jews.”

Hezbollah-led attacks on northern Israel since October 2023 have resulted in the deaths of 32 civilians. In addition, 61 IDF soldiers and reservists have died in cross-border skirmishes and in the ensuing ground operation launched in southern Lebanon in late September.

Hezbollah has said the group is attacking Israel in support of Gaza amid the war there. That war began October 7, when Hamas-led terrorists rampaged through southern Israel, massacring some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251 to Gaza.

In the past year, 12,400 rockets have been fired from Lebanon into Israel.

After Friday’s attack, Hezbollah claimed responsibility, saying that it had launched the rockets at Karmiel, a Jewish-majority town 7 kilometers (4 miles) from Majd al-Krum.

“It’s a very hard and dangerous situation,” said Kdah.

Kdah said that 60% of the buildings in the town have no reinforced rooms.

“When there are sirens, people stay in their houses and pray that a rocket doesn’t fall on them,” he said.

Since the attack, the Home Front Command has promised four more bomb shelters. Business people in the community have also pledged money for additional shelters to be placed around the town.

Muted quiet

Majd al-Krum is home to some 15,700 residents, almost all Muslim. The centerpiece of the town is a mosque with two minarets topped in silver. Buildings go up fast, sprawling over the flat valley and climbing up rocky hills. The town is abuzz with shoppers, stores, construction and movement.

But in the courtyard of Orjwan Manaa’s family compound on Tuesday morning, there was a muted quiet.

The family was mourning the young woman’s loss, sitting and talking in hushed voices, sometimes crying. In one part of the courtyard was a circle of women. In another part, men sat in a separate circle.

A relative walked among the visitors, offering a plate of dates wrapped in aluminum foil, cookies and unsweetened Turkish coffee.

Holding out her cellphone with a photo of Orjwan, Areej said that her daughter “never stopped smiling.”

“She loved to help people, and she never hated anyone,” Areej said. “Orjwan was my daughter, my sister, my friend, my everything.”

She was the oldest daughter in the family, followed by one brother and three younger sisters.

The second oldest sister, Norhan, 20, drove with this reporter to the supermarket to see the remains of the attack.

It was four days later, and the supermarket was at a standstill, in disarray, with groceries lying in the aisles.

Norhan surveyed the mess. She gently stepped over her sister’s blood still staining the floor and looked around, returning with a price card that her sister had written in Hebrew next to a display of tomatoes.

Norhan stared at some shelves lined with spice bottles that her sister had arranged the week before.

The bottles were still in perfect order, untouched.