An Indian woman who was working as a caregiver has been killed in a Hamas rocket attack at Ashkelon in southern Israel on Tuesday, which prompted retaliatory airstrikes from Israeli forces.
31-year-old Soumya Santhosh was on a video call with her husband in southern Indian state Kerala in the evening, when a rocket fell on her residence in the city of Ashkelon.
"My brother heard a huge sound during the video call. Suddenly the phone got disconnected. Then we immediately contacted fellow Malayalees working there. Thus we came to know about the incident," Santhosh's brother Saji said.
Soumya Santhosh hails from Kerala’s Idukki district was working as a caregiver attending to an elderly woman at a house in the southern Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon.
Ashkelon is a coastal city that borders the Gaza Strip has been under attack by Palestinian terrorists. Reportedly, Soumya was living in Israel for the past seven years and has a nine-year-old who was staying with her husband Kerala.
The 80-year-old whom Soumya was taking care of is said to have survived the attack on the house but is hospitalized in a serious condition.
Daughter of former Kanjikuzhy panchayat member Satish and Savithri, Soumya had last visited Kerala in 2017.
A local news channel reported that the rocket shelter was a few minutes run away from the woman’s house and both could not manage to reach it in time. Their home didn’t have a fortified room of its own.
According to some media reports, a technical bug with an Iron Dome battery (an all-weather air defence system that intercepts and destroys short-range rockets) during the massive rocket blast towards the Israeli coastal city that blocked some rockets from being intercepted and may have been responsible for the casualties and deaths.
Ashkelon's Mayor Tomer Glam said that some 25% of citizens in the city do not have access to a shelter to protect themselves when rockets are fired at the city and it becomes impossible to protect oneself when such an emergency arises minutes, Glam added.
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There are houses from the 1960s that has no basic protection. Time has come that the treasury officials and decision-makers take cognizance of what is happening here in the city, he stressed.
Israel's ambassador to India Ron Malka on Tuesday took to Twitter to condole the Indian woman's death. "On behalf of the state of Israel, I convey heartfelt condolences to the family of Soumya Santosh, murdered by Hamas indiscriminate terror attack on innocent lives. Our hearts are crying with her 9-years-old son that lost his mother in this cruel terrorist attack," he wrote.
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Condemning the incident, newly-elected MLA and Nationalist Congress Kerala leader Mani C Kappan in a Facebook post said that thousands of Keralites are working in Israel, fearing their lives, adding he seeks intervention of the central and state governments in this matter.