A 10-year-old boy was among the four people killed by an Iranian missile strike in central Israel, with more people still unaccounted for at the scene, according to emergency services.
A large emergency response operation is underway in Bat Yam city, where a building was directly hit.
A 60-year-old woman, an 80-year-old woman and a girl whose age was not given were also killed in the strike, according to Israel’s national emergency service Magen David Adom (MDA).
Videos from Bat Yam showed a building with its facade ripped from it, and tall piles of rubble. Emergency workers could be seen scouring the scene with search dogs, and residents gathered on the street behind a cordon line.
“We don’t have the exact number of people that are missing, but we do know that there’s a lot of people that haven’t contacted their loved ones yet, so now we’re focusing on looking for them,” said Bat Yam mayor Tzvika Brot, in video by the Reuters news agency.
Brot said the first building was hit around 2:30 a.m. Other buildings in the area were also damaged, with videos showing windows shattered and window frames torn from the outer walls.
Authorities are now setting up family centers and working to support residents displaced by the strikes, he said, urging the public not to go near the site.
Lt. Dean Elsdunne, the international spokesperson for Israel Police, said they received “reports of numerous impact sites” after “a large barrage of rockets” fired from Iran.
“We have a number of casualties that we had to medically evacuate, and unfortunately those include fatalities,” he said, speaking from Bat Yam, in Reuters video. He added that police are working with other Israeli agencies, including the military, to locate missing residents and secure the scene.
About 140 people have been wounded in two locations across central Israel.
In a separate wave of strikes, four additional people were killed in northern Israel, raising the death toll from attacks overnight into Sunday to eight.
