Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar condemned on Friday Iran’s ballistic missile strike that hit a mosque in Haifa, saying that Tehran’s deliberate targeting of civilian population centers constitutes “war crimes and a huge mistake.”
“The Iranian regime launched a missile attack on Haifa and struck the Al-Jarina Mosque in the Wadi Nisnas neighborhood,” he said in a statement to the foreign press.
“The missile attack injured Muslim clerics who were in the mosque. The Iranian regime is targeting Muslim, Christian and Jewish civilians, as well as civilian sites,” he continued.
“We must remove the existential threat from Iran. We will continue our operation and will not stop for even one minute before we will achieve our goals,” Sa’ar said.
Iran’s missile attacks are “a mistake because at the root of it is a lack of understanding of the Israeli society. The Israeli society is strong. It strongly supports our operation in Iran. They all want to remove the double existential threat: the nuclear threat and the missile threat,” the foreign minister added.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog expressed indignation with regard to the “outrageous attack [that] took place in Haifa—a city that stands as a symbol of coexistence between Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, Circassians and Bahá’ís.
“They try to kill Israelis of all faiths—Muslims included. We will defend all Israelis. All faiths included,” Herzog said.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry posted a video of Al-Jarina Mosque’s muezzin, Amro Hossein, whose father was wounded in the attack.
Speaking to a camera from within the shattered mosque, Hossein said that it was built when the Ottoman Empire ruled the country.
The Iranians “don’t ask you if you are Muslim, if you are Jewish, if you are Christian, if you are anything. They attack everyone in this country just for one thing—to smash this country,” Hossein said.
He vowed that Israel “will never get smashed. This country will defend itself and smash every enemy [that attacks it].”
A barrage of Iranian missiles struck locations across Israel on Friday afternoon, scoring several direct hits on homes and wounding at least 23 people in Haifa, three of them seriously, according to the Magen David Adom emergency medical service.
Iran launched some two dozen projectiles at the country, the Israel Defense Forces stated. Medical officials said that one of those seriously injured in Haifa is a teenager. They added that 20 were lightly injured in the attack.
Fragments from interceptor missiles fell across central and southern Israel, including in Tel Aviv and Beersheva. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
In a separate barrage early on Friday, an Iranian ballistic missile hit in Beersheva, lightly wounding five people.
The missile impacted just outside a cluster of apartment buildings, causing significant damage to nearby homes.