Iran responds to the US with more missiles against Israel

Tel Aviv.- The response to the new wave of bombings by Israel, now with the help of United States, on Iran, was not long in coming this Sunday: around 7:30 local time (4:30 GMT) the air raid sirens woke up millions of Israelis in the face of the arrival of a new barrage of Iranian missiles that would manage to hit several points in the country.

"This was my home until about four hours ago," explains Shahar Keinan, 42, to EFE. Behind him, there is only a tangle of rubble and a swarm of soldiers scouring the place trying to rescue the belongings of the neighborhood's residents, north of Tel Aviv. As every night, in what has become a routine for him and his family, the air raid sirens made them run to the bunker of the neighboring building until everything passed, but "this time everything was, obviously, completely different". "We heard explosions here and there when they occurred near the house, but this time it was, obviously, completely different. Everything started to collapse," he recounts, not without showing relief since both he and his wife and their children, aged 11, 8 and 3, did not suffer a scratch. His condition surprises those who approach him: the building under which the shelter is located has been completely destroyed. From the rooms, now without walls and visible to any passerby, hang books and toys, and on the floor of the impact zone, the pages of a little girl's notebook full of drawings can be glimpsed. Up to 50 neighbors gathered in the shelter, police spokesman Dean Elsdunne tells EFE, which, according to him, explains the reduced number of injured: 20, mostly minor, in the vicinity of the building. Both highlight that the catastrophe in the area could have been greater, since not far from the impact area there was a retirement home that had been evacuated just four days before.

The Israeli Army raises to 22 the number of people directly injured by the attacks so far. Among the rest, the majority suffered from anxiety or falls when heading to shelters.

Both Keinan and his neighbors have become part of the more than 9,000 displaced in Israel after their homes were affected by Iran's attacks since the Israeli government gave way, with a wave of bombings on the Islamic republic, to the war on June 13th.

Since the beginning of the war, some missiles launched from Iran have managed to hit strategic infrastructures in Israel. However, Israeli military censorship prevents, citing security reasons, specifying how many or which places are affected.

Uncertainty After the U.S. Entry into the War

The attack this Sunday has become the first in a new stage of the war in the Middle East, marked by the entry of the United States into the conflict. Israeli Army spokesman Effie Defrin informed the press this morning that the United States' overnight attack against the Islamic republic had been coordinated with Israel. From the United States, the president, Donald Trump, announced the attacks against "the slaughterhouse of the Middle East" (Iran), assuring that his planes had bombed the nuclear plants of Isfahan, Natanz and, above all, the ultra-protected Fordó. The dead there already exceed 430 according to official figures. The Iranian organization Hrana, based in the United States, puts them at more than 800. Iranian reprisals have so far killed 24 people in Israel. The morning has passed calmly in a Tel Aviv that, after the first wave of attacks in a war that now includes the United States, tries to live normally while the country exchanges bombings with an 'enemy' more than 2,000 kilometers away. For others, like Rabbi Levi Mendelson, that normalcy was interrupted two weeks ago, when the Army called him as a reservist soldier to be part of the rescue teams that today are touring the impacted places. "You see the massive damage here and no one was seriously injured, and this is thanks to the miracles we see from God," he assures, while his colleagues, visibly religious by the curls hanging below their helmets, call him to continue searching among the rubble.