‘I can’t digest it’: Israel’s deadliest attack since the war began kills nine and razes a synagogue

With about thirty individuals sheltering in the local bomb shelter on Sunday afternoon while sirens sounded outside, Oren Katz moved to shut the reinforced door.

It was a gesture of self‑lessness typical of the father of four, and it would claim his life. As he reached the entrance, the shelter was struck directly by an Iranian missile.

“Even in trouble you would say give, and that giving cost you your life,” his wife Samadi said in a tribute at his funeral. “You went upstairs to close the shelter and it took a heavy toll. I can’t digest it,” the ynet news site quoted her as saying.

Katz was one of nine victims, including four teenage children, killed in the deadliest strike Israel has suffered since it joined the United States in confronting Iran on Saturday.

The Biton family lost three children—13‑year‑old Sarah, 15‑year‑old Avigail and their brother Yaakov, 16—who are survived by their parents and a sibling. The other boy killed was 16‑year‑old Gabriel Baruch Revah, Israeli media reported.

The blast completely demolished a synagogue that had stood above the shelter and caused the thick protective roof to collapse. Remarkably, much of the structure remained intact despite its age and the force of the impact, said an officer who led the search‑and‑rescue effort.

“Even with the very severe impact that was here, and the price that was paid in this attack, the vast majority of people that were in the bomb shelter came out of it alive,” Lt. Col. Oded Revivi said at the site.

“In the bomb shelter there were over 30 people, two are dead, one is injured and 28 people came out alive,” Revivi added, noting that seven people were killed outside the shelter.

The casualty count matched the worst single attack of the twelve‑day war with Iran last June, when another missile struck an apartment block in Bat Yam near Tel Aviv. In addition to Katz and the four teenagers, two women were killed with their adult children: Sara Elimelech and her daughter Ronit, and Bruria Cohen with her son Yossi.

Revivi described arriving at a scene of horror, with survivors fleeing two massive fires, cars burning around the missile site and wreckage spreading far beyond the immediate impact zone. Israeli authorities operate a sophisticated early‑warning system that usually gives residents a few minutes to reach a shelter, if one is available.

Some parts of the country lack shelters altogether, especially areas with large populations of Palestinian citizens of Israel. In other locations the shelters are aging or not built to withstand a modern missile.

The attack on Beit Shemesh, a quiet hillside town about half an hour from Jerusalem, sparked widespread fear. Nissim Edri, a 71‑year‑old community leader whose home sits a block from the impact site, lost childhood friends in Sunday’s strike.

When sirens blared the morning after the attack they interrupted several funerals, prompting mourners to drop to the ground or crouch.