Rocket Bombardment: – Nobody Wants War

Haifa (Dagbladet): Yuri knows he has 30 seconds to get downstairs when the sirens start. This morning it was barely six o’clock when the alarm woke him up. When he picks up five-year-old Mia from bed, he starts counting in his head. “1, 2, 3, 4,” he says as he runs down the concrete stairs, Mia in his arms. His wife and two sons are 11 and 14. He’s afraid of not getting down in time, he’s afraid of falling down the stairs, he stresses.

Air defense system Iron Dome They tend to shoot down the lion's share of the rockets that fly into Israeli territory. But just this morning they missed.

hard morning

“That morning was tough. I admit it,” Yuri says when Dagbladet meets him two days after the incident, in the Kriot neighborhood north of Haifa.

From the balcony of the family's apartment, he looks directly at the crime scene where a Hezbollah rocket landed and exploded. The walls and streets are covered in soot and shrapnel, and windows were shattered in several nearby homes. No one was seriously injured in the impact.

It still smells like gunpowder as the wind blows against us.

In Yuri's house, Mia's bedroom window was shattered, and the wall was hit by several shrapnel wounds. The pressure wave knocked the outer door wrong, and it was now impossible to close it.

– I've been used to it since the 2006 war. Then we didn't have Iron Dome, and there were a lot of rockets that fell here. But now we don't expect any attack at all.

Yuri himself was a child when the war between Israel and Hezbollah broke out in 2006. That's why he knows how much this war weighs on his children now.

“It was loud,” Mia, 5, says of the crash.

“It was scary. It was weird. The explosion was very scary,” says 14-year-old Elijah.

“I've never experienced anything like this before, but if it happens again, I know what to do,” he continues.

569 dead in Lebanon

Haifa is just 30 kilometers south of the border with Lebanon, where rockets and artillery have been fired by both Israel and Hezbollah almost daily since October 7 of last year. Yet the coastal city’s residents lived peacefully during the war here in the north. That was until the Pager attack in Lebanon, and the escalation that followed.

Israel launched extensive airstrikes on the Lebanese side. By Tuesday evening, 569 people had been killed, including at least 50 children, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

– gets a reason to respond

Hezbollah has responded by sending hundreds of rockets into Israel — even further south than before. Monday was the first time sirens sounded in Haifa since the war began. Five rockets were fired at the center, but air defenses intercepted them all.

In the Gaza Strip, where war has been raging since a Hamas offensive on October 7, at least 41,467 Palestinians have been killed, according to Palestinian health authorities.

Health authorities said at least 95,921 people had been infected.

Yuri believes that this is just the beginning, and that more such attacks may occur in the future.

– Nobody wants war. Everyone will lose.

Mass Escape in Lebanon: Panic and Chaos

explosions in the air

At the crime scene, construction workers and Israeli soldiers are cleaning up. Several neighbors look on at the work.

“It’s ironic that the missile exploded here, since many of the neighborhood’s residents work in the factory that makes air defense missiles,” says an elderly man who gives his name as Nathan. He also used to work in the factory, which he says is right next door to the neighborhood.

As we stood at the crime scene, we suddenly heard a series of drones shooting out of the sky. People scattered, looked around and pointed to a cloud of smoke to our south – another missile had been fired by the air defense.

Another neighbor, Lior, who passes by, describes the situation as scary and dangerous, and that a couple he knows has chosen to move away from the neighborhood temporarily, fearing new attacks. He himself intends to stay.

He says he supports Israel now expanding the war against Hezbollah.

He added: “We have waited a long time for this, for them to remove Hezbollah.”

Shortly after the attack began, the city declared a state of emergency. This meant restrictions on the number of people who could gather outdoors, and the cancellation of school, educational and recreational activities.

Hospital in emergency

“The city looks idyllic from here. But it’s not ideal now,” says Ohad Hochman, the general manager of one of the city’s hospitals. He stands on the balcony outside his office, overlooking Haifa, the sea and the border with Lebanon to the north.

As we talked, we heard a series of drones over the city. In the distance, we could see anti-aircraft missiles shooting off the cliffs, trailing long tails of grey smoke, before exploding in a white cloud.

“We’re not used to hearing this. But yesterday I had to walk through the bomb room in my house eight times,” says Hochman, who lives 30 minutes east.

He explained that the hospital is now in a state of emergency due to the escalation and the risk of a major war.

Hochmann himself was in New York when this part of the war began. From there, he made the decision to move all patients and all treatment from unsafe facilities to safe ones. Six hours later, the hospital staff moved everything to the basement.

The hospital actually has ten floors, but now only the lower floors are being used. During normal operation, they have space for 462 patients, but now they are limited to about 200. Those who can be sent home have had to leave.

He takes us to the first basement. The exit doors are made of thick steel.

The floor is built like a bomb shelter, but furnished like a clinic. He says it can withstand all threats and missiles.

Here, and on the floors below, they house all the hospital functions. In addition to gathering the departments under a secure roof, the staff trained and practiced how to collectively deal with the wounded. The vests that hospital staff would have to use in such an incident hang in the hallway.

“We plan to be able to accommodate up to 80 patients at a time,” Hochman says.

– But we hope it will never be necessary to take the test.

New mom

Pushing the entire hospital down to the lower floors means there will be a shortage of space, the general manager admits. Until now, patients have been kept close together, often separated only by curtains, in cramped rooms with no windows.

– It's not perfect, but it's the best we can do.

At the lowest level – 15 metres below ground – they combined the most important functions: surgery and the maternity ward.

Ella has just become a mother to a daughter, and was discharged from the hospital while visiting Dagbladet.

She says the birth began on Sunday evening, right after the hospital moved the operation to the bomb rooms.

– I had two other children in the same hospital. Then I got a private room and everything was fine. But now I was lying in a cramped room with three others, and the only privacy I had was a curtain. And suddenly she says it was another father of children, or an employee, who had come across me.

It's been a challenge, but I'm content, says the new mom.

After we left the hospital, we heard a third barrage of rockets being fired into the city. People followed it through the streets without being too intimidated.

Despite the many explosions, we see people everywhere walking, shopping and sitting in cafes, but much less than usual, says a kiosk worker we speak to.

– The place is usually packed with people outside, but now it's almost empty – because of the missiles and such, he said.

– Now cafes close earlier than usual.

– Are you also going to close early?

– No, then I'd rather take the missiles.