What Is The Most Heavily Bombed Place In The World?

In his report on his visit to Israel, Philip Jacobson notes that:

On a parched strip of the Israeli/Palestinian border, a dustbowl frontier town has a unique boast: per head of population, it is the most heavily bombed in the world. [emphasis added]

The city, of course, is Sderot.

Jacobson reviews the rules for staying alive in that city:

1. I am not to fasten my seat belt. This is the only place in Israel where seat belts are forbidden. Buckling up prevents drivers and their passengers getting out of a vehicle quickly.
2. I am not to play my car radio. It may drown out the warnings.
3. I am not to have a shower if there is nobody else in the house to hear the alarms. Last month, a woman who ignored this rule was washing her hair when she was blown off her feet.
4. Be extra vigilant when it's misty. It can confuse the laser-activated warning systems.

Because of its proximity to the border and the concentration of Hamas-led amateur bomb-makers on the other side, Sderot has a unique civic claim: on a rocket-per-head-of-population basis, it is the most targeted town in Israel, indeed the world.

Of course, Jacobson wrote his article back in February 2008. Since that time, Israel finally hit back after years of seeing thousands of rockets fired from Gaza at civilian targets in Israel.

So what is the situation now in Sderot since Operation Cast Lead?

Not good.

Israel's military says more than 260 rockets or mortar rounds have hit Israeli territory since then, the vast majority landing in open ground. Its air force has retaliated with dozens of air strikes, mostly aimed at Gaza's smuggling tunnels into Egypt.

"This is not resolved," says Noam Bedein who runs a media centre in Sderot, a provincial town close to the Gaza Strip border and often in the firing line for rockets for a decade and particularly since Israel withdrew from the enclave in 2005.

And again the media is silent.

Technorati Tag: Sderot.