An Israeli kindergarten class was spared from a Hezbollah drone that blew up in their classroom when their teachers made a quick decision to take shelter after hearing faint sirens.
Sarah Yasour, a kindergarten teacher at Nesher, said everything was silent on Tuesday morning when she and her fellow instructors heard a siren in the neighboring town, the Times of Israel reports.
“We heard a very distant siren… and said, ‘Alright, let’s go in,’” Yasour said. “We’re not taking any chances now, and within a few seconds, we were all in the shelter.”
“We suddenly heard a huge noise and understood it must be close,” she added. “Only when we got out did we realize the scale of the miracle. It hit exactly where we had been.”
There were no reported injuries to staff or children as a result of the drone attack, officials said.
The drone, which managed to sneak past Israel’s missile defense system, hit a tree outside the kindergarten class and exploded.
Video from the local KANN broadcaster shows the classroom and playground littered with glass and debris from the explosion.
Nesher Mayor Roy Levy praised the teachers’ quick-thinking and told Israeli media that the city ” did not have an alert before the UAV exploded near the kindergarten.”
The Israel Defense Forces said it was investigating why no sirens were activated in Nesher while the alarms in other northern cities went off.
Officials confirmed that sirens in Western Galilee and cities near Haifa went off as the Israeli Air Force scrambled to try to intercept the drone.
The drone that hit the kindergarten was just one of about 190 rockets and UAVs Hezbollah fired on Monday, with the blasts injuring seven people and damaging several buildings and vehicles in northern Israel.
Hezbollah’s daily strikes on Israel, which began on Oct. 8, 2023, have killed 41 civilians, according to the IDF.
About 62 IDF soldiers and reservists have also been killed in the cross-border attacks and the ongoing ground operations in Lebanon that began in September.
