KIRYAT SHMONA (Israel), Aug 9: Terrified and exhausted by the daily rain of rocket fire, residents fled to the wail of sirens on Wednesday in the first evacuation of an entire town since the creation of Israel in 1948.
The sirens sounded again as two Katyusha rockets came crashing down into the northern Israeli town border town of Kiryat Shmona, about five kilometres from the Lebanese border.
“Get us out of this hell,” an angry Israeli man told Mayor Haim Barvivai, as the remaining residents scrambled to be included in the authorities’ evacuation plans.
Of the town’s 24,000 inhabitants, “around 15,000 have already fled to the south, in hotels, in kibbutz or found refuge with their families,” Barvivai told AFP.
“Most of the 9,000 residents who are still here want to leave,” he added.
Those wishing to be evacuated were invited to inform the authorities of their desire to leave following Israel’s announcement that the cabinet would discuss widening its ground offensive in southern Lebanon.
“But we lack the means” to accommodate everybody, “and we had to make decisions,” said the mayor.
“I cried and I cried and I cried. I don’t want to stay here. The children cannot stay in the shelter any longer,” said Shimrit, clutching her 18-month boy to her bosom.
The distressed 25-year-old mother queried why she and two children were not included in the list of 500 slated for evacuation in the next batch.
Miriam, who has two children and is pregnant with a third, was also denied a place on the coveted list.
The 500 residents who made it on the mayor’s list were evacuated from Kiryat Shmona overnight and bussed to the coastal city of Netanya, north of Tel Aviv. They will be given temporary accommodation on an army base.
Some of those who had decided to stick it out when Hezbollah started firing rockets into the area four weeks ago are now desperate to find shelter elsewhere in Israel as the daily barrage of Katyusha shows no sign of abating.
Esther, 57, is in an almost constant state of panic attack. Shortly before the buses carrying the evacuees left the deserted town, three rockets ploughed into a nearby neighbourhood.
She ran to her building’s shelter. “It’s dirty here, there are rats here,” she said, her entire body shaking in fear.
This usually peaceful community at the foot of the Golan Heights has been engulfed in violence since Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on the border on July 12.
Israel responded by launching its largest military offensive since the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, drawing a rain of rocket fire from the well-armed Shiite guerrilla group.
But Kiryat Shmona residents remained unanimous in rejecting a ceasefire with the fundamentalist militia.
“Hezbollah terrorists have been firing at us for three years,” Esther explained. “We have to go all the way now and wipe them out. Otherwise, all this will never stop.”
The Israeli security cabinet was expected to decide on Wednesday whether or not to widen its ground offensive, in a bid to drive Hezbollah fighters deeper into Lebanon and create a buffer zone to prevent rocket attacks. —AFP
