Rocket narrowly misses dozens of Holocaust survivors

Dozens of elderly Holocaust survivors, in a facility in the Acre area, came very close to being hit by one of the four Katyusha rockets fired into Israel from southern Lebanon on Thursday afternoon.

The survivors, who live in a facility comprising several buildings in the area, heard sirens wailing ahead of the rocket attack, but were unable to reach bomb shelters before the rocket struck.

The rocket, one of two that landed in residential areas, fell a short distance from their facility, causing damage to “four or five homes” and two cars in the immediate area, Channel 2 News reported on Thursday night.

Fragments of a second rocket landed in Kibbutz Gesher Haziv, also causing damage to property.

Personnel from UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, came to the kibbutz on Thursday evening to document the rocket’s impact.

UNIFIL and the Lebanese Army were reported to have opened an investigation into the rocket attack. Four rocket launchers were said to have been found in or near a Palestinian refugee camp in the Tyre area of southern Lebanon, from where they were fired south at the Nahariya and Acre areas in northern Israel.

One rocket, apparently heading for a residential area, was intercepted by an Iron Dome anti-missile battery — the first time Iron Dome has been successfully employed to down incoming missiles in the north. The battery was deployed in the area three weeks ago, amid concerns over spillover from the Syrian civil war to Lebanon, and thence to Israel.