Rockets hit Ashdod as health minister visits
‘There’s a sense of panic. We feel it, mothers feel it’
Rockets were fired against the city of Ashdod, sending its population to secure areas as Health Minister Yuli Edelstein was visiting the local Samson Assuta Medical Center on Wednesday afternoon. Fragments of a grenade were found in the hospital grounds later in the day.
“Unfortunately, it is not something unique; in all of southern and central Israel there have been many alarms in the past day,” Edelstein commented. “My hope is that our forces and especially the aviation will make the other side understand that these actions are not going to pay off.”
“We don’t know yet how things will develop,” he added.
Inaugurated in 2017, Assuta was built as a missile-safe structure, with the vast majority of its departments completely secured, allowing the medical personnel to continue working under attack.
As of Wednesday afternoon, some 30 patients had been treated at the center since the beginning of the conflict on Monday evening.
As Edelstein visited the hospital, an 11-year-old was undergoing surgery after getting hit by shrapnel. All other patients had already been discharged.
“I work in the safest place in
Ashdod,” Dr. Eli Sapir, director of the Radiotherapy Institute, told The Jerusalem Post, as all of those who found themselves in the hospital’s lobby, featuring wide glass walls, ran to take refuge inside a ward as a siren blared.
“My department is underground,” he said, before excusing himself to call his family at home and make sure that they were okay.
Soon after the minister left, barrages of rockets were fired against the city; alarms went off multiple times, staff and visitors in unprotected areas hurried to take cover in secured rooms, and phones rang with calls from family members and friends to reassure each other
that everything was okay.
“Working in this situation is just crazy,” said Etty Ben Abu, a nurse working in Assuta’s maternity ward.
“There is a sense of panic. We feel it, the mothers feel it,” she added. “We also came from a night that was not easy. And many mothers have other children at home, schools are closed, and they are worried about them.”
Among the new mothers was Yifat, a 37-year-old from GanYavne. She gave birth to a baby girl on Tuesday. At home she has an 11-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl.
“This is not an easy experience; there is a lot of stress,” she said.