VIDEO - Members of the Yaakobov family have gathered around the bed of their father Yaakov who was critically injured from shrapnel from an explosion as a Qassam hit the factory where he works Tuesday morning, and called on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to wake up because "Sderot is crying.
Yaakobov, 43, immigrated with his family to Israel from the Caucuses 12 years ago. He worked as a forklift driver at the chicken slaughtering factory at the Shaar Hanegev industrial zone and when the alert went off, he was not able to reach the protected area in the factory, and got hit with shrapnel in his head and all over his body.
At the same time, his 12 and 13 year-old children were at home because they were afraid to go to school because of the Qassams. His wife, Purim, was at work at the time in a restaurant just outside of town.
"I heard that a Qassam fell in a factory where my husband works and I had a bad feeling which only grew worse when he didn't answer the phone when I called him," Purim told Ynet. "When I saw there was no answer, my friends took me to Sderot and then straight to Soroka Hospital in Beer Sheva."
His two sons also tried calling him, and when he did not answer, they also feared for the worse. They did not even see him in the morning because he left for work before they woke up.
The family has been sitting in the hallways of Soroka Hospital with sad faces, fearful for the fate of their father and husband. Yaakobov's eldest son is mostly angry at the government: "If this would have happened to them, they would have understood and listened, but they don't care. They just sit there far away at the Knesset."
Yaakobov's sister Janet Nahshonov explained the tactic of the Palestinians. "They know that there are no children in Sderot and everyone is in Eilat. Most of the times, the Qassam's fall around 7:30 a.m. as the children are being picked up on their way to school, but today it was a strange feeling when the Qassams came late and fell at 8:10. We are going to work everyday in fear and waste all our time on phone calls. What about the state? What are we, second class citizens?"