Rockets Rain Down on Israel After Terror-Filled Day

Palestinian rocket attacks sent Israelis in the coastal city of Ashdod rushing to bomb shelters Friday night just before the onset of the Jewish Sabbath.

News reports and government tallies indicated at least 16 medium and long-range rockets rained down on Israel’s south throughout the day, one day after multiple terror attacks around the resort city of Eilat claimed eight lives.

Friday was not without miracles, however, as people in the range of rockets fired from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip reported warheads that failed to detonate and casualty figures that could have been much worse. One of the rockets reportedly fell a scant few hundred yards from the home of Rabbi Schneur Goodman, director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Ashdod, but the house was undamaged and the family escaped injury.

Also in Ashdod, a synagogue was struck at about 8:15 a.m., but in what worshippers described as “an open miracle,” there was no explosion. But a second rocket landed next to a yeshiva, injuring six men who had emerged after the first missile fell, thinking the attack was over.

Friday evening, two rockets landed in open areas in the Be’er Tuvia Regional Council district, and 10 minutes before the onset of the Sabbath, another rocket exploded near the city of Gedera, said Younis Abu Hamad, an Israeli government certified tour guide.

A Day of Attacks

The day began with a suicide bombing outside Eilat apparently aimed at a platoon of Egyptian soldiers on the other side of the border.

The Israeli Air Force, acting on information indicating that Thursday’s attacks could be traced to Gaza-based terrorists who had possibly crossed into the Egyptian Sinai before crossing back into Israel near Eilat, kept up air strikes at targets in Gaza throughout the day.

In hospitals throughout the region, doctors treated victims of both Thursday’s attacks and the Friday missile barrages.

Rabbi Menachem Kutner of the Chabad Terror Victims Project reported from the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba the families of terror victims are in desperate need of financial and spiritual assistance.

Kutner, who opened a situation room for CTVP representatives and Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries in the region to coordinate emergency assistance, met with a family from Eilat whose son was undergoing life-saving surgery. The son was among those shot when gunmen opened fire on Egged Bus No. 392 outside Eilat Thursday.

While the rabbi comforted the family, an army officer entered the waiting room to ask what assistance they needed. They responded that needed transportation back and forth from Eilat to visit their son, but the officer replied that regulations only provided for bus fare. Kutner immediately offered to pay for a rental car as long as they needed one.

Kutner said that many families are asking synagogues and concerned people around the world to pray for the wounded.

Their Hebrew names are: Matan ben Ilata, Guy ben Rinat, Chagai ben Rachel, Ronit ben Sachar, Sagi ben Channa, Gal ben Hadassah, Shmuel Zeev ben Esther, and Yitzhak Meir ben Malka.