“‘We were in the safe room and suddenly we heard a massive blast and saw shrapnel inside the house,” Yarin said, standing in the middle of a previously quiet street now strewn with broken glass and shattered lengths of metal.

Speaking with The Times of Israel, the Beit Shemesh resident described the moment that an Iranian missile, having evaded air defenses, struck his neighborhood in Beit Shemesh, killing nine people and injuring dozens of others, destroying a synagogue, and causing extensive damage to a public bomb shelter and surrounding homes.

“All the walls shattered, glass, all the drywall, the front door came apart,” he said.

The missile impact in Beit Shemesh was the deadliest in Israel during the current conflict with Iran. During the 12-day war with Iran in June 2025, the deadliest strike in Israel also killed nine people, when a missile struck a Bat Yam apartment building.

Away from the site of the attack, life appeared to go on as normal in Beit Shemesh on Sunday, with children walking in costumes ahead of the Purim holiday and many stores operating as usual despite Homefront Command guidelines mandating the shuttering of schools and nonessential businesses.

Approaching the site of the strike, however, the atmosphere quickly changed, with dust filling the air and helicopters and drones circling overhead. Glass crunched underfoot and large chunks of concrete and twisted scraps of metal blocked the sidewalks.

The windshields of cars parked along the street were either shattered or completely missing. Houses were........

© The Times of Israel