The identities of four of the victims of the Bat Yam missile attack were cleared for publication on Monday and Sunday evening.
The names of the remaining victims have not yet been cleared for publication, but the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry announced that five of them hold Ukrainian citizenship. Among the victims are two children aged 8 and 10, and an 18-year-old.
Since the start of the war, 24 civilians have been killed, and there is still grave concern for the life of a woman who is defined as missing at the impact site in Bat Yam.
The victims who have been identified are:
Meir (Miro) Vaknin, H’yd, 56, a resident of the city, was married and a father of three.
Michoel (Miki) Nachum, H’yd, 61, a resident of the city and father of four children.
Efrat Saranga, H’yd, 44, was married but did not leave behind any children.
Bella Ashkenazi, H’yd, 94. Her husband and son were injured in the incident and are hospitalized at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv.
Their granddaughter, Shani Buana, told Ynet, “There was no secure room in their apartment. There is a shelter in the building, but both my grandfather and my grandmother are infirm. My grandfather is 100 years old and uses a walker. My grandmother couldn’t walk at all. She also suffered from dementia in recent years and was confined to a nursing bed that was in the living room.”
“It was impossible to take both of them down to the shelter every time a siren went off. I think that’s why my uncle didn’t evacuate either—out of solidarity. He couldn’t run to the shelter and leave his parents unprotected.”
(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
2 Responses
Infirm people should have a permanent place in the shelter or at least a safe room in the flat. It’s obvious they can’t run every time when there is a sirens.
@DavidtheKanoi – optimally, that would be great, but the shelter is not really set up for people to be there full time – it’s generally in a basement and without air conditioning or facilities. A safe room in an apartment is also a good idea, but the requirement for a safe room only came in in the early 1990s, after the first Gulf War – so older apartments don’t have them. With infinite funding, this could be fully addressed – but funding is not infinite, so choices have to be made based on probabilities. Most unfortunately, things worked out badly here.
an Israeli Yid