A 25-year-old civilian construction worker was killed Wednesday morning by rocket fire from Lebanon aimed at the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona by Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists. Two other people in the city sustained minor wounds in the attack.
Emergency medical responders from Magen David Adom (MDA) said the victim, identified as Zahar Bashara, a Druze Israeli from the Golan Heights town of Ein Kinya, was rescued without signs of life from a burning factory warehouse that was hit by a rocket.
Firefighters subsequently managed to bring the flames under control, while other teams scanned the city and worked to extinguish flames from rocket fire at other locations.
A barrage of some 30 rockets were fired at the city. Most were intercepted by the Iron Dome aerial defense system but those that managed to get through landed in approximately seven different areas around the city.
“We saw thick smoking rising in one of the industrial buildings,” MDA paramedics Orly Ben Simon and Shilo Senoff said. “We rescued a 30-year-old worker who was fully conscious and unharmed, who told us that his friend was still trapped in the building.
“After complex rescue operations by large numbers of IDF soldiers, police and fire brigade personnel, the 25-year-old laborer, who is not a resident of the city, was pulled out. He was unconscious without a pulse and not breathing, with severe multi-system trauma, and we were forced to pronounce him dead at the scene.”
No other casualties were reported.
Firefighters from the Galilee-Golan regional station continued working to extinguish burning vehicles, gas leaks and searched for other victims at other locations where rockets landed in the city.
“Firefighting teams from the Galilee-Golan stations have been working since this morning at the scenes where rockets landed and destroyed property,” said Northern District Fire and Rescue Services Commander Tafser Yair Elkayam. “The fighters are working professionally and with determination while under additional threats of rocket fire.”
Hezbollah said in a statement claiming responsibility for the attack that it had also targeted the IDF’s 769th Brigade base in the city.
Twice on Tuesday, Israel Strikes Targets Deep into Northeast Lebanon
The terrorist organization said the barrage was fired in response to “the massacre committed by the Zionist enemy in the town of al-Habbariyeh.”
Overnight, IDF fighter jets struck a Hezbollah military compound in the area of al-Habbariyeh in southern Lebanon, according to a an Israeli military spokesperson.
Seven terrorists were eliminated in the late-night attack.
“In the compound, a significant terrorist operative belonging to the ‘al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya’ (“Assembly of Islam) organization who advanced attacks against Israeli territory was eliminated along with additional terrorists who were with him,” the spokesperson said.
The al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya terrorist organization reportedly former an alliance with Al Qaeda in 2006.
