Jerusalem – Panic again struck the southern Israeli town of Sderot yesterday, as 10 sirens during the day sent thousands of people running for shelters.

Yossi Haimov, a 10-year-old boy, suffered serious injuries to his arm yesterday when a missile fired by Palestinians, who were deployed on the ruins of a destroyed Israeli village in north Gaza, landed near the boy’s school in Sderot.

Doctors and paramedics who were dispatched to the scene managed to stop the bleeding and evacuate the boy to a hospital in Ashkelon, while at least a dozen other Sderot residents were treated for shock.

The parents of the 10-year-old from Sderot received good news yesterday afternoon, after the hospital’s deputy director-general, Dr. Ron Lobel, informed them that the doctors had managed to save their son’s arm, which was badly injured in the rocket attack.

Dr. Lobel updated the parents that the injury to Yossi’s arm was very bad and caused damage to the tissues and nerves in the area.

“The surgery is not over, but as it seems at the moment, his arm was not damaged and he will be able to continue using it. He is still in the operation room,” he said.

Haimov returned from school yesterday afternoon together with his 8-year-old sister, Maria. Maria later said that after returning from school, she and her brother left their bags in the house and went to visit a friend and later went out to the backyard.

“We heard the Color Red siren system, quickly ran and hid, there was a small ‘boom’, and then when we came out there was once again a strong explosion. We hid near the wall and then the shrapnel hit Yossi in the shoulder and his entire shoulder was filled with blood,” she said.

“Yossi didn’t cry, but he said ‘it hurts.’ We both quickly ran to a grocery store, screaming. The grocery store owner quickly called for an ambulance and they took Yossi to the hospital,” Maria said.

Someone called the children’s mother, who rushed to the place from her office.

The sister continued to describe the moments of horror: “Yossi didn’t cry, he only kept telling me that it hurts. I don’t remember much from the injury. All I remember is that there was a lot of smoke, and when I saw Yossi’s shoulder with blood, I could see that his entire shoulder was broken.”

The children’s father, Tashkent Haimov, said that he was informed of his son’s injury while at work.

“I understood from the neighbors that he managed to hide behind a wall, and only his arm stuck out a little and was hurt. We were really lucky that he did not sustain more serious injuries.

“This is not the first time rockets land near our house, and our house was damaged several times. We have been living in Sderot for many years. I work in this city, my family lives here, and with every day that passes, I don’t know how it will end and what will happen tomorrow. This is a situation we can’t continue living with,” Mr. Haimov concluded.

Meanwhile, 6,500 police officers and border police troops deployed along the fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel, as well as around Gaza vicinity communities, in order to help IDF forces repel any demonstrators who might attempt to cross the border. However, only a few hundred Gazans showed up.

David Bedein can be reached at Media@actcom.co.il. His Web site is www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com

©The Bulletin 2008

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David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.