More than 30 people were injured Saturday night in an Iranian missile strike on the city of Dimona in southern Israel, which houses a nuclear research facility, emergency services announced in a new assessment.
AFP images from the impact site show a partially destroyed house where rescuers, bomb disposal experts, and army sappers are working. The ground around a large crater is churned up, and the facades of nearby buildings have been largely destroyed.
The two closest buildings were blown away and collapsed on themselves. Debris of all kinds, severed trees, and concrete blocks litter the area, resembling a battlefield.
Prompted by social media images showing a fireball crashing to the ground, the Israeli army confirmed to AFP that it was a “direct missile hit on a building” in Dimona, located in the Negev Desert.
The Magen David Adom (MDA) teams, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross, reported treating “a boy of about ten years in critical condition… suffering from shrapnel wounds” and “a woman around 30 years old… suffering from glass shrapnel wounds.” They also evacuated “31 slightly injured patients” with shrapnel wounds who were seeking shelter, as well as 14 people experiencing anxiety symptoms.
The targeted site is in a residential area of Dimona, near five kilometers from the nuclear research center southeast of the city.
– “Resilience” –
The army stated in a release that “attempts to intercept had been made” without success before the impact and that the causes “will be examined.”
Dimona is home to the Negev Shimon Peres Nuclear Research Center, a nuclear facility used for research purposes that foreign press reports suggest has been involved in nuclear weapons production in recent decades.
Little information is available about the Dimona nuclear site. Israel maintains a “strategic ambiguity policy,” neither confirming nor denying the possession of nuclear weapons.
Iran claimed responsibility for the missile strike on Saturday, stating it was a “response” to the “enemy” attack on the Natanz nuclear complex (central), reported earlier by Tehran.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with the mayor of Dimona in the evening, praising the residents’ resilience and wishing a speedy recovery to the injured while emphasizing the importance of seeking shelter during air raid alerts.
Shortly after the strike, Israel also reported a missile fired towards the Eilat region, located about 200 kilometers further south of Dimona.
Published on March 21 at 9:17 PM, AFP.
