Nationwide drill sends Israeli schoolchildren into shelters

An estimated 1.7 million Israeli schoolchildren headed for shelters this morning in response to a nationwide emergency siren as part of disaster drills that authorities said were an attempt to learn the lessons of Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah.

At 10 a.m., a rising and falling siren sounded throughout the country, signaling the start of the most public aspect of the weeklong drills. News footage showed children filing out of classrooms under the direction of their teachers, and “injured” student being treated by paramedics and carried off on stretchers.

On Monday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and members of his security cabinet ran through a scenario of Israel coming under multiple missile attacks. Today police and rescue workers in the coastal city of Haifa will practice responding to a simulated chemical plant explosion prompted by a missile attack. Officials will unveil and test a $500,000 underground shelter and disaster response headquarters built underneath the city’s central bus station.

The memories of Israel’s 2006 confrontation with Hezbollah, when the Lebanese militant group’s rockets showered down on northern Israeli cities and towns for weeks, hang over this week’s events. Also weighing on Israelis are the current attacks on the southern town of Sderot, which is frequently hit by rockets fired from the Gaza Strip.

“All these things heightened the awareness of the general population, and I think this is important and will help us to be better prepared,” said Col. Zvika Tessler, Home Front Command director for Tel Aviv, in an interview with Israeli radio. “I see it in the schools, I see how the students and the teachers react, the principals, the local authorities. Everyone is taking it very seriously, and I think that this in itself is already a big achievement.”

Sderot, where rocket sirens remain a fact of daily life, was the one town exempted from Tuesday’s drills. Israeli officials said Gazan militants fired three rockets and 32 mortar rounds toward Sderot during the day, with no reported injuries.

This week’s massive domestic mobilization has placed Israel’s neighbors to the north on edge. Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora put his military on heightened alert, and the United Nations troops enforcing the cease-fire in South Lebanon reportedly increased the number of patrols.

During a rally Sunday in southern Beirut, Hezbollah Deputy Sheik Naim Qassem called the drills “part of preparations for war because Israel is always in a warlike situation.”

Olmert took pains to deny any ulterior or aggressive motive.

“I want to emphasize that this is only a drill, with nothing hiding behind it,” Olmert told his cabinet Sunday. “We have no secret plans. This drill is not part of anything else.”

Other members of his government were less restrained.

Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said this week’s practice would prove vital in any future war with Hezbollah and possibly the group’s Syrian backers.

“I expect that in the opening attack hundreds of missiles will strike Israel. There will be no place in the country which is not within range of Syria and Hezbollah’s rockets,” Ben-Eliezer said from his ministry’s war room.

He also warned Iran, which Israel accuses of financing and arming Hezbollah, against ever attacking Israel. Any Iranian attack, Ben-Eliezer told reporters, “will cause the destruction of the Iranian nation.”

ashraf.khalil@latimes.com

Special correspondent Raed Rafei in Beirut contributed to this report.