the lives of residents of Ashdod, in the south of Israel, punctuated by rocket fire alerts

It sounded every day, sometimes every hour. The rocket fire alert tells residents of the city of Ashdod, in southern Israel, to seek refuge as quickly as possible. They can do their shopping or drink coffee, but they have to run to the nearest shelter: “It’s protected there but less than here on the stairs and they stay there. It annoys me. We cannot force anyone“, tells Léah, a supermarket employee, to franceinfo.

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She says that “This is the second time today that I have taken refuge. Yesterday there was only one, it depends on the day.“Despite the “Iron Dome” supposed to protect Israel from rockets fired from Gaza, missiles have continued to fall since the start of the Hamas attack on Saturday October 7.

“You don’t get used to living like this.”

Elijah, inhabitant of Ashdod

at franceinfo

Everyone experiences this situation in their own way. Léah says she is not afraid: “I was in the army, I’ve lived here a long time. It’s not that you get used to it but it’s my faith in God. I know he protects me.“On the other hand, Elijah believes that”we don’t get used to living like this.“He has been staying in a hotel in the city since a rocket fell on his house last Saturday, on the first day of the attack by the Palestinian Islamist organization.”I try not to show my stress to the children so as not to worry them, I keep calm“, he tells franceinfo.

In front of him, one of his children makes faces to try to get a smile out of him. But Orai, eleven years old, also has difficulty keeping calm and he is not the only one: “The dog was very scared. You know, dogs are animals that hear very loudly. We entrusted it to our neighbors who live in a village. They have around twenty dogs now, we knew that there, everyone would be safe.” He wonders if his classmates, too, are okay. It’s been a week since he’s seen them.