At least nine people were killed in an Iranian missile strike on a residential neighborhood in Beit Shemesh, about 35 miles west of Jerusalem, the Israeli emergency medical service, Magen David Adom, reported on Sunday, bringing the Israeli death toll from the war with Iran launched a day earlier to 12.

Another 28 people, including young children, were injured, with two in serious condition. 

The missile barrage on the mostly Orthodox Jerusalem suburb directly struck a public bomb shelter under a synagogue, among other sites.

Yehuda Shlomo, an MDA EMT, said that when he arrived on the scene, he saw “heavy structural damage, smoke in the air and a great deal of chaos with dozens of frightened casualties emerging from the damaged buildings.” 

Another EMT, Tzvi David, said that he rescued a woman in her 60s trapped under a slab of concrete and that firefighters extricated three children from a locked room.

Photos and videos taken by MDA show buildings destroyed to their foundations, others heavily damaged, and burned-out cars. 

IDF International Media Spokesperson Lt.-Col. Nadav Shoshani posted on X that “since the beginning of Operation ‘Roaring Lion’ the Iranian regime has been targeting civilians, we know that this is their strategy. In their recent attack they killed many civilians in the community of Beit Shemesh. The Iranian regime is a terror regime.” 

“I send my deepest condolences to the families. We will continue to do everything we can to remove these capabilities from this bloodthirsty terror regime,” Shoshani stated.

Late Saturday night, a missile strike in the Tel Aviv area killed two women, one a Filipina caregiver aged 32 and the other aged 68 who died of respiratory issues while moving to a shelter, and injured 121 people.

A 102-year-old man in Ramat Gan, east of Tel Aviv, also died after falling down the stairs on his way to a protected space during an incoming missile siren, Ichilov Hospital announced Sunday.

About 40 buildings in Tel Aviv sustained damage from the missile strikes, with one deemed uninhabitable, the municipality stated. Over 200 residents were evacuated to hotels in the city.

The most heavily damaged building did not have its own safe room and most residents had evacuated to a public bomb shelter, Israel’s Home Front Command said. 

Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited the impact site in Tel Aviv and called on the people of Israel and the region to “stay strong.”

“This is a historic effort to change the trajectory in the Middle East to a different future — a future of peace,” Herzog said. “We’ve been confronted by an empire of evil for a generation.”

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whom Israel killed on Saturday, “spent a whole generation taking his people’s resources and directing them towards terror, bloodshed, pain and horror. And what we are doing here, together, all the allies, the United States, leading this effort … towards a vision of peace in the region,” Herzog said.