Babies raced to safety as rockets target Israel

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Hamas renewed its rain of rockets over Israel on Tuesday night, striking throughout southern Israel, with one directly hitting a home in Ashkelon and another slamming into a shopping mall.

Also on Wednesday, the armed Abdul Qader Husseini Brigades of the Fatah movement, to which the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas belongs, claimed responsibility for two rocket attacks on Ashkelon.

Following the rocket salvo, Ashkelon’s Barzilai Medical Center on Wednesday had its premature babies and newborns transferred to sheltered areas underground and in a special delivery room in a concrete bomb shelter.

“We’ve transferred 14 premature newborns and 30 newborns as well as five mothers who just had caesarean sections, to more protected areas in the hospital,” the Medical Director of Barzilai Medical Center, Dr. Chezi Levy told Tazpit News Agency.

“We are trained for these kinds of war situations and we’re waiting to see what develops following the renewed rocket attacks,” Levy told Tazpit. “This is not the first time that the hospital has had to undergo security precautions but we definitely hope it will be the last.”

Barzilai Medical Center has 300 doctors, 700 nurses and 532 patients according to the center’s spokeswoman, Ayelet Kedar.

Two weeks ago, on Aug. 7, when the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire went into effect, the Ministry of Health and the Home Front Command announced that Barzilai Medical Center would return to full normal activity, setting new dates for all patients whose appointments were postponed during the Protective Edge Operation.

In other news, the Israel Home Front Command issued new security instructions on Tuesday night for southern Israelis, forbidding the gathering of over 300 people in communities within seven kilometers of the Gaza Strip. Gatherings of 500 people within 40 kilometers of Gaza have also been cancelled. Other security measures include the closing of beaches and urban markets in the south as well, while public bomb shelters were reopened in communities located 50 miles from the Gaza Strip.  

Local authorities in central Israel also ordered the opening of public bomb shelters a few hours after Hamas violated the ceasefire on Tuesday, with rocket attacks on Beersheba. The mayors of Rishon LeZion, Rehovot, Ramat Gan and Tel Aviv ordered the opening of public bomb shelters on Tuesday night, when minutes later a heavy salvo of rocket fire from Gaza began.

Hamas’s Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades fired rockets at central Israel and claimed that it fired the Iranian Fajr 5 missiles at central Israel and the M-75 missile at Jerusalem on Tuesday night, where sirens were heard shortly before midnight. Eight rockets targeted Tel Aviv on Tuesday night and a strike from a rocket was found in the Beit Shemesh area.

The Iron Dome intercepted at least five rockets heading for residential areas throughout the night and several more during Wednesday including one over Kiryat Malachi and over the Hof Ashkelon region.

Hamas breached the Egyptian-brokered truce on Tuesday afternoon, seven hours before it was supposed to end, firing a salvo of rockets at Be’er Sheva and southern Israel.