TEL AVIV, Israel – “The Consul and his wife are, fortunately, fine; they sustained minor injuries – she on the head, he on the leg – immediate medical attention was provided, and substitute accommodation has been found,” Croatian Ambassador to Israel, Vesela Mrđen Korać, told Jutarnji list.
Journalists from Jutarnji list spoke with her after news broke that the Croatian Consul and his wife were injured in last night’s Iranian attack on Tel Aviv. The building where they resided, also home to diplomats from many other European and world countries, was hit.
The building is located near the target of the attack – the Israeli Ministry of Defense – in a neighborhood with numerous diplomatic residences. The building where the Croatian Consul lived was severely damaged by the force of the impact on the Ministry – four floors were completely destroyed. In addition to the Croatian Consul’s apartment, apartments belonging to Canadian and Latvian diplomats were also damaged.
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“We received the Croatian Consul’s apartment for use from the Ministry of Defense, and as far as we know, it is completely destroyed and currently impossible to return to. We are waiting for the security assessment of the building, which cannot be entered now, and only then will we know if the Consul and his wife can at least retrieve their personal belongings,” says Mrđen Korać, who is currently in Croatia.
She states that she will return to Tel Aviv as soon as possible, but Israeli airspace is currently closed to all civilian traffic, so her return will have to wait. Diplomatic staff currently in Tel Aviv remain there, and the team has already been reduced, as some staff left the country when the conflict with Palestine erupted.
The Ambassador says that the current preoccupation of Croatian diplomacy is organizing the evacuation of Croatian citizens – tourists who found themselves in Israel.
“27 citizens have contacted us, for whom we are trying to secure transport as soon as the airspace opens, but we do not yet know when that will be. We also do not know whether the evacuation will be carried out by commercial flights or by some other means – everything depends on the conditions,” says the Ambassador.
It has been 660 days since the start of the conflict with Palestine, says Mrđen Korać. Alerts have become a daily occurrence, and most residents in apartments have so-called safe rooms – windowless rooms, additionally reinforced, with a metal partition in the middle. They are good for protection against smaller missile attacks, but they are not helpful against ballistic missiles.
“In those cases, we seek shelter in garages, but a 100 percent safe place does not exist. Ballistic attacks penetrate multiple levels of ground,” the Ambassador explained.
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Source: Nova, Foto: AP