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By Joe Lauria / Consortium News
The damage assessment in Israel from Iran’s counterattack against Tel Aviv’s unprovoked aggression against Iran last month is coming in.
Despite strenuous efforts by Israeli authorities to suppress news from bomb sites, the extent of the destruction suffered by Israel is now being revealed.
The Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Monday that the vaunted Israeli air defense system, headlined by the so-called Iron Dome, failed to prevent a significant inundation of Iranian ordnance.
Some single ballistic missiles landing on Israeli streets damaged a wide area of surrounding buildings purely from the vibrations of the impact, the newspaper reported.
“Throughout Israel, between the shock waves and the direct impact of the heavy Iranian missiles, the destruction spread out over hundreds of meters,” Haaretz said. “Thousands of houses and buildings have been damaged, some severely, with exterior and interior walls collapsing.”
“The common denominator is the person uprooted from his or her home, who will feel the shock for years,” the paper said. It further reported:
“In Tel Aviv, 480 buildings have been damaged, many of them badly, at five separate sites. In Ramat Gan, it’s 237 buildings at three sites, about 10 badly. In another Tel Aviv suburb, Bat Yam, 78 buildings were damaged by one hit; 22 will have to be razed.
The Israel Tax Authority has received applications for financial assistance for nearly 33,000 damaged structures. Another 4,450 files have been opened for the loss of belongings and equipment, and another 4,119 for damaged vehicles”.
The Iranian attacks killed 29 Israeli civilians and, according to a Haaretz map, 96 buildings were severely damaged.
By contrast, in the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq fired 42 Scud missiles at Tel Aviv and Haifa, killing two Israelis and damaging 4,100 buildings, destroying 28.
The Haaretz report deals only with civilian buildings. Iran also hit a number of Israeli military bases, including Kirya and Camp Moshe Dayan in Tel Aviv; as well as the BAZAN oil refinery in Haifa, causing significant damage; and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, destroying two buildings.
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Joe Lauria
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe