Israel Health Ministry on Thursday said that 271 people arrived at hospitals after the Iranian ballistic missile attack this morning — four in serious condition, 16 in moderate condition, 220 in good condition, 24 suffering from acute anxiety, and seven undergoing medical evaluation whose condition has not yet been determined, The Times of Israel reported.
Of those at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, which was directly struck by a missile, 71 people were lightly injured and one person suffered from anxiety. Most of the lightly injured were hurt on their way to a protected area or were suffering from anxiety. they said.
Since the beginning of Operation Rising Lion, 2,345 injured people have arrived at hospitals: 21 in serious condition, 87 in moderate condition, 2,105 in good condition, and 99 suffering from anxiety, the The Times of Israel reported, quoting the ministry.
So far, most of the injured have been released. Currently, 106 people are being treated in hospitals, and another 149 are being treated in the emergency room.
The ministry asked people living near elderly citizens to assist them as much as possible in choosing the closest and safest protected space, and practicing getting there and arriving as early as possible, even before the alarm sounds, to prevent accidents caused by falls on the way.
The ministry has also instructed health maintenance organizations and resilience centers to strengthen mental health support services by allowing victims of anxiety to receive telephone support without having to go to hospitals. The phone number for the National Resilience Therapeutic Center is 5486 and operates around the clock.
Meanwhile, a Hezbollah operative was killed in a drone strike in southern Lebanon earlier today, the Israel Defence Forces said, marking the third in less than a day.
According to the IDF, the operative was involved in efforts to restore Hezbollah infrastructure in the Houla area.
The chief of the Military Intelligence Directorate, Major General Shlomi Binder, says the IDF must “hunt down” Iran’s military commanders, “wherever they flee.”
Speaking to soldiers at one of the directorate’s command centers, Binder describes the elimination of Major General Ali Shadmani, Iran’s most senior military commander, earlier this week.
“Two days ago, we managed to strike one of their secret headquarters in the mountains. Some of the commanders managed to escape to another location. Twelve hours later, we struck the chief of staff of Khatam al-Anbiya, who had fled to another mountainous area near Tehran,” Binder said, as per The Times of Israel.
“We have to hunt them down wherever they flee. And you’re succeeding in turning Iran from some distant place, 1,500 kilometers away, into a military we know how to deal with as if it were in our first circle. You’ve turned the third circle into the first circle,” he said, as per The Times of Israel.
Binder says that in the IDF’s opening strikes early Friday, 30 Iranian commanders were killed. The IDF named eight top generals killed that morning, and said that the strikes killed dozens of commanders and at least nine nuclear scientists.
Meanwhile, the Tourism Ministry is calling on the government to allow tourists stranded in Israel due to the Iran war to apply for special permission to leave the country via air travel.
In a letter sent to the Prime Minister’s Office acting director-general Drorit Steinmetz, Tourism Minister director-general Dani Shahar urged the government to allow tourists to leave the country, subject to approval by an exceptions committee appointed by the Transportation Ministry. The exceptions committee is designated to review and prioritize requests from Israeli citizens with exceptional humanitarian and medical needs seeking to return to the country on repatriation flights.
“Tourists find themselves in a state of uncertainty and distress in light of a fierce war. Some stay here beyond their planned stay, sometimes in difficult financial and personal conditions, and report a sense of abandonment and loss of trust in state institutions,” Shahar wrote in the letter.
“We request that return [repatriation] flights to Israel also be used for outbound flights to transfer tourists from Israel to their countries of origin, as is the case with cruise ships and land border crossings that are overwhelmed,” the letter said, as per The Times of Israel.
“Prioritization is not only a humanitarian and necessary act, but also has great political and image value: those tourists will become ambassadors of goodwill for the State of Israel, or the opposite, if they are perceived as having been abandoned by the country they chose to visit,” the letter read.
On Tuesday, the Tourism Ministry launched a digital registration form for tourists stuck in Israel due to the war to facilitate their departure from the country once permitted. About 22,000 tourists have so far registered on the form and are seeking to get on repatriation departure flights to leave Israel, the ministry said. (ANI)
