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Jul. 24, 2006
Two killed, more than 14 hurt, as Katyushas hit Haifa
By TOVAH LAZAROFF
The rocket that fell in the courtyard of their large apartment complex in Haifa late Sunday afternoon caused the Sabag family to pack its bags and head for the home of relatives in Rishon Lezion.
"I’m not a hero," said Nurit Sabag as she sat on her front lawn while police and emergency personnel cleaned up the broken glass and shards of metal from the missile.
The hit to the complex was one of more than 14 rockets that Hizbullah successfully launched from Lebanon into Israel’s third largest city on Sunday.
Earlier in the day, a rocket killed Shimon Glickglich, 60, as he drove his car on a main street in the city. A second rocket that fell on a carpentry shop in Kirtat Ata killed Haviv Ova’ad, 48.
Upwards of 14 people were wounded in the attacks, including one seriously and two moderately.
There were so many successive warning sirens that, in a number of instances, rescue and clean-up crews who came to the scenes of the rocket attacks had to race for cover, even as they worked to clear the sites of the initial attacks.
But no siren rang out around 5 p.m. on Sunday afternoon to warn the Sabag family, or the dozens of others who live in their neighborhood near the sea in Haifa, that a rocket was about to fall. Shir Sabag, 13, and her older sister Shavi said that the absence of a warning explained why they were not in the protected room when the rocket hit a tree, a gas balloon and the wall of the apartment building.
When they heard the loud explosion they first raced to a safe spot in the house, but when informed that the rocket might have hit a gas balloon they ran out of their home in the bottom corner of the complex to a spot several doors away from the attack.
They told The Jerusalem Post that they had spent their days and nights in fear since the rockets first landed in the city almost two weeks ago, but that it was their mother who was determined to stay.
"How long can you spend living in someone else’s home?‘ asked Nurit. ’I thought it was better to be here." Now she understands she was mistaken.
The youngest daughter, fiveyear-old Shoval, was at the hospital getting stitches for a small head injury unrelated to the rockets when the rocket struck. Her first question upon arriving home with a small bandage on her head was, "Are our bags packed?"
But not everyone was ready to leave. Even though the rocket shattered all the windows in her home, Marina Gzhibovsky said she was determined to stay. Unlike her husband, who headed out to his job as a construction worker, taking his 16-yearold son along with him, she listened to the Home Front Command instructions that she remain at home.
Typically when a warning siren goes off, she said, she and her neighbors head into the small stairwell outside her apartment door rather than racing for the communal shelter nearby.
"I didn’t leave the house and see, I was hit anyway," she said as she looked out her window.
An immigrant from Russia, she considered it lucky that her son was not home. Since the rockets started falling, she said, he too had tried to stay inside and had spent many hours on his computer in one of the rooms damaged by the rocket.
Irina Arokov said that her mother Basia Porsnikov, who is also a Russian immigrant, was similarly lucky in that she sat in her living room watching television as glass shattered around her.
As they spoke, a warning siren rang out and the Gzhibovsky family, as well as Arkov and Porsnikov all huddled in the stairwell.
In Memoriam
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