Re: Occupied Palestine…
Fear not, Hezbullah is trying hard to keep up. From the same HRW report:
Ninety of the 639 Katyusha rockets fired into Israel landed in the vicinity of the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona, fifty-eight of them in the city proper, all causing injury or property damage, according to Israeli sources interviewed by Human Rights Watch. The three serious Israeli civilian casualties during the conflict were all residents of Kiryat Shmona.
There were direct hits on eleven houses in Kiryat Shmona, and seven of them sustained heavy damage. Two of the homes were totally destroyed, and two were completely destroyed by fires ignited when the Katyushas exploded. Another 250 homes were moderately damaged, and 1,757 were lightly damaged. Most structures that were not directly hit by rockets were damaged by shrapnel. Some 2,018 homes were damaged in the city, out of a total of 5,800 homes. The area of the Havradim housing development alone, home to 2,100 people, was hit eight times. Three hundred factories and manufacturing plants were also damaged, seven of them badly. Most of these buildings were located within the city’s industrial zone, where rockets fell on April 19, April 23, and April 26.
Particularly at the beginning of Operation Grapes of Wrath, the **Katyusha attacks appeared timed to yield maximum casualties: rockets were fired in the early morning, when civilians set out for work and school, and in the evening when residents returned home. **But residents of the north told Human Rights Watch that after the first three days, the rocket fire became more sporadic. “Once they knew we were in the shelters, they fired at all hours to keep us guessing,” said one resident of Kiryat Shmona. “This made it impossible to know when it might be safe to come out.” The Katyushas typically were fired in volleys of between two to seven at a time. On April 16, for example, six rockets landed in a Kiryat Shmona neighborhood at the same time. The next day, pairs of rockets rained on different parts of the city throughout the day. “It’s a war of nerves,” another resident said. "You never know where orThe rocket attacks terrorized the civilian population in northern Israel, and forced the displacement of tens of thousands of residents. Katyushas are inaccurate weapons with an indiscriminate effect when fired into areas where civilians are concentrated. The use of such weapons in this manner is a blatant violation of international humanitarian law. In addition, when guerrillas fired the rockets in reprisal for attacks by Israeli military forces that killed or injured Lebanese civilians, they committed another grave violation of the laws of war.6