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Tick-tock, tick-tock: time running out on Haifa as missiles rain down

Amin Qudsi
Haifa is a ticking time bomb. It boasts a massive petrochemicals industry, complete with a maze of underground pipes carrying all sorts of explosive agents crisscrossing the city, as well as extensive military targets.
And now, Israel’s northern-most, big city has hundreds of missiles raining down on it every day -with 105 rockets fired on Tuesday from the Lebanon border which is just 27km away. It’s a worst-case scenario unfolding as far as its fearful residents are concerned.
The Times of Israel in 2019 compared the city’s underground network of pipes to “the devastating threat posed by cross-border, underground terror tunnels”.
Haifa residents’ minds have been alive to the possibilities ever since Hezbollah two months ago published a video taken by one of their drones surveying the city’s Bay Area, complete with footage of the Haifa Naval Base, missile ships, the Rafael defence company plant, Iron Dome installations, rocket storage sites and other military sites – along with large civilian shopping centres and densely populated neighbourhoods.
They probably wish they had accelerated a 10-year plan, started back in 2021 according to the Jerusalem Post, to start moving the city’s many chemical plants away from urban areas.
Israel Hayom news site says a 12 000 ton ammonia plant – identified in 2016 by Hezbollah as its “atom bomb” – was moved a year later.
“Nevertheless, residents of the Haifa Bay area cannot breathe a sigh of relief quite yet, as ammonia was not the only danger: About 2.5 million tons of around 1,500 hazardous materials, including bromine, chlorine, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), and ethylene, are still stored there, posing a substantial potential risk during wartime,” Israel Hayom noted in August.
Air raid shelters have been identified all over the city, with an autonomous system enabling the opening of all public shelters in an emergency. Generators have been installed in public buildings and school shelters. Wireless routers are also installed in underground parking garages.
Haifa’s residents still recall the hundred rockets fired at it while Israeli troops were retreating from Lebanon last time around, Israel Hayom notes.
The Alma Centre for Research on Northern Security Challenges has warned “the entire area from Haifa northward will be a focal point” of Hezbollah’s continuing missile assault on the city.
“The reasonable assessment is that for about ten days, Hezbollah will launch approximately 3,000 mortars, rockets, missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicles daily from Lebanon,” it said. The warning noted “it will be difficult to maintain normal life during the first week or two across the entire area north of Haifa, including in Haifa itself”.
Yossi Almagor (45), a long-time Haifa resident told Israel Hayom waiting for the attacks was the worst part: “You can’t turn the country into a bunker … but I feel that this waiting period is terrible for everyone. It’s better to be already under attack, rather than just waiting for it.”

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