UPDATE: Sderot

Sderot Children have a Safe Place to Play

The city of Sderot is nearing the completion of its first playground equipped with bomb shelters.

“It is very important to us in Sderot to have protected playgrounds for the children to play,” Sderot spokesperson Shalom HaLevi said. “We plan to build more.”

“The idea of the park is that when there is a Tzeva Adom [alarm], the children can run quickly to safety in the tunnels,” said construction manager Boaz Etzion.

The park should be finished in about a month and will look quite different than it does now, he added. Among other amenities, such as lights and a fountain, the tunnels that serve as shelter from the rockets will be designed to resemble a centipede to make them look like part of the park, rather than bomb shelters.

The construction of the playground is being funded by Ariyeh Green, according to Etzion, who said the tunnels alone cost 150,000 NIS.

HaLevi confirmed that the funding came from donations, but would not specify the source of the donations.

View video here

We Remember

Afik Zahavi and Mordechai Yosepov killed by a Qassam Rocket Four Years Ago.

Exactly four years ago Afik Zahavi, four years-old, and Mordechai Yosepov, 49, were killed by a

Qassam rocket fired by Hamas from the Gaza Strip at 8:15 in the morning on June 28, 2004. The rocket struck near a nursery school in Sderot.

Ruth Zahavi, was taking her son Afik to the nursery school, when the rocket landed and exploded. She was critically wounded in the rocket attack, along with ten other people who were lightly hurt.

At Afik's funeral, his father, Yitzhak, prostrated himself on the small body and wept, "I love you Afik. I will see you everywhere. Look how many people are here accompanying you." The boy's mother remained in intensive care in Beersheba's Soroka Hospital at the time.

Mordechai Yosepov was sitting on a bench near the Lilach nursery school, where his two grandchildren attend, when the same rocket killed him. Yosepov came to Israel in 1993 from Uzebkistan. He was on his way to the Employment Service to find work when the Qassam rocket struck.

Mordechai Yosepov is survived by his wife, a son, a daughter, and five grandchildren. He was buried in the Sderot Cemetery.

Since January 2008, over 1,600 Qassam rockets and mortar shells have been fired at Sderot and the western Negev. Four Israelis have been killed this year alone from rocket and mortar attacks fired from Palestinian terror groups; Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah's Al Aqsa Brigades in the northern Gaza Strip.