A 73-year-old man narrowly survived when a munition from a cluster missile exploded just meters from his car Sunday near Habima Square in central Tel Aviv.
Shlomo Ezra Aked had stopped at an intersection during an air raid siren when the blast occurred. Video from the scene shows Aked braking at a red light. A second later, a powerful explosion erupts two to three meters from his vehicle.
Tel Aviv driver after missile blast near car: 'I thought I was dead'
“I was in my car. I didn’t hear the early warning, and when I heard the siren I looked for a place to stop. The light turned red,” Aked said from Ichilov Hospital, where he was taken after the blast. “Suddenly, there was a huge explosion. The windshield flew at me, and the windows and pieces of the curb were thrown into the car and hit my head.”
Aked said he remained seated in shock for several moments after the explosion. “I thought I was dead. Everything was smoke,” he said. “I touched my legs, realized I was alive and said, ‘Wow.’ I got out of the car. I could barely walk. I felt like I was going to fall.”
He said he is suffering from head pain and is believed to have sustained a concussion.
In a message to the public, Aked said: “No matter what they do to us, we will never break. We have no other place — only Israel. Here we will live.”
At least 15 people were wounded in the cluster missile strike on central Israel, including one in serious condition and three in moderate condition. The seriously wounded man, 53, was injured in Tel Aviv’s Kerem HaTeimanim neighborhood and suffered blast injuries.
Impact sites were reported in Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan and Petah Tikva, including along a section of the Ayalon Highway and near Habima Square. Emergency crews responded to multiple scenes across the area.