Arab threw Molotov cocktails at a Jewish building in the Chabad neighborhood of the mixed Arab-Israeli city of Lod on Thursday night at 1 a.m., sparking a loud explosion and a large fire. One of the firebombs was hurled at a window of a room where children were sleeping.

In what residents described as an open neis, just as the fire started, a Chabad chassid returned with fire extinguishers which the Chabad shomrim in the area had received from the central crisis operations center in Lod, and he quickly put out the fire. [Many Israelis do not own fire extinguishers.]

A resident told Kan News: “They came here in the middle of the night with the goal of murdering children in the religious neighborhood. It’s insane – half of the people in the building left for Shabbos. Everyone on the first four floors left. No one thought it would come to this.”

“I came home after a wedding and five minutes later, Molotov cocktails were thrown at our building,” another resident said. “In an open neis, right when it happened my neighbor returned with fire extinguishers to distribute to every home in the neighborhood. He came right when the fire broke out and was able to extinguish it.”

“This could have been the end of my entire family and maybe the whole neighborhood as well, chas v’shalom. It all happened in less than one minute.”

זווית נוספת pic.twitter.com/oKtJpl8K0m

— אור רביד | Or Ravid (@OrRavid) May 28, 2021

The incident comes amid an extensive police operation named Operation Law and Order to arrest suspects involved in violence and street riots.

Israel Police said that 348 suspects have been arrested since the start of the operation and 1,938 have been arrested since the escalation of violence and rioting began. A total of 175 suspects have been indicted.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)