- African players in Europe: Salah leads Golden Boot race after brace
- German far-right AfD to march in city hit by Christmas market attack
- Ireland centre Henshaw signs IRFU contract extension
- Bangladesh launches $5bn graft probe into Hasina's family
- US probes China chip industry on 'anticompetitive' concerns
- Biden commutes sentences for 37 of 40 federal death row inmates
- Clock ticks down on France government nomination
- Mozambique on edge as judges rule on disputed election
- Mobile cinema brings Tunisians big screen experience
- Honda and Nissan to launch merger talks
- Police arrest suspect who set woman on fire in New York subway
- China vows 'cooperation' over ship linked to severed Baltic Sea cables
- Australian tennis star Purcell provisionally suspended for doping
- Luxury Western goods line Russian stores, three years into sanctions
- Wallace and Gromit return with comic warning about AI dystopia
- Philippine military says will acquire US Typhon missile system
- Afghan bread, the humble centrepiece of every meal
- Honda and Nissan expected to begin merger talks
- 'Draconian' Vietnam internet law heightens free speech fears
- Israeli women mobilise against ultra-Orthodox military exemptions
- Asian markets track Wall St rally as US inflation eases rate worries
- Tens of thousands protest in Serbian capital over fatal train station accident
- Trump vows to 'stop transgender lunacy' as a top priority
- 'Who's next?': Misinformation and online threats after US CEO slaying
- Only 12 trucks delivered food, water in North Gaza Governorate since October: Oxfam
- Langers edge Tiger and son Charlie in PNC Championship playoff
- Explosive batsman Jacobs gets New Zealand call-up for Sri Lanka series
- Holders PSG edge through on penalties in French Cup
- Daniels throw five TDs as Commanders down Eagles
- Atalanta fight back to take top spot in Serie A, Roma hit five
- Mancini admits regrets over leaving Italy for Saudi Arabia
- Run machine Ayub shines as Pakistan sweep South Africa
- Slovak PM Fico on surprise visit to Kremlin
- 'Incredible' Liverpool must stay focused: Slot
- Maresca 'absolutely happy' as title-chasing Chelsea drop points in Everton draw
- Salah happy wherever career ends after inspiring Liverpool rout
- Three and easy as Dortmund move into Bundesliga top six
- Liverpool hit Spurs for six, Man Utd embarrassed by Bournemouth
- Netanyahu vows to act with 'force, determination' against Yemen's Huthis
- Ali hat-trick helps champions Ahly crush Belouizdad
- Salah stars as rampant Liverpool hit Spurs for six
- Syria's new leader says all weapons to come under 'state control'
- 'Sonic 3' zips to top of N.America box office
- Rome's Trevi Fountain reopens to limited crowds
- Mbappe strikes as Real Madrid down Sevilla
- Pope again condemns 'cruelty' of Israeli strikes on Gaza
- Lonely this Christmas: Vendee skippers in low-key celebrations on high seas
- Troubled Man Utd humiliated by Bournemouth
- 2 US pilots shot down over Red Sea in 'friendly fire' incident: military
- Man Utd embarrassed by Bournemouth, Chelsea held at Everton
'It's scary': Israeli frontline city in dark over port blast risks
The smell of fuel wafts from storage tanks to Dovi Sonny's apartment -- a long-time irritant, and now a major worry after Hezbollah revealed that the facility in northern Israel was in its sights.
Sonny, 66, has no idea what would happen should a rocket hit one of the towering circular containers about 100 metres (yards) from his building in Haifa.
He, like everyone else in the port city, just 30 kilometres (less than 20 miles) from the Lebanese border, has been left in the dark about the risks from the industrial area -- and so fears the worst.
Both the tanks and his apartment block featured in drone footage released by Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed group that has been exchanging rocket fire with Israel since the start of the war in Gaza.
"When we hear the (rocket) sirens... it's scary," says Sonny, a guitar repairman with silver skull bracelets, tapping his chest with his fist to evoke a pounding heartbeat.
"During the Gulf War, one missile fell not far from here. And all the houses... It's truly scary," says Sonny, who also plays bass in a rock band.
His neighbourhood of Kiryat Haim is part of the Haifa municipality, but cut off from the city by a large industrial zone that includes an oil refinery, a commercial port, and an oil storage facility.
There are dozens of immense tanks, one of which looms close to his block behind a chain-link fence.
- 'Residents don't know' -
Hila Laufer, a Kiryat Haim resident and former Haifa city councillor with the Green Party, is not assuaged by official reassurances that the site was made secure by emptying some tanks.
"The residents don't know how many are really full and how many are empty," she tells AFP, pointing at the row of tanks closest to apartment blocks.
"And they don't even have the energy to investigate this matter, because they don't really believe that we will ever be able to move the oil from here," she said.
She recalls Haifa's past grassroots campaigns to relocate the industrial area away from residential areas, mostly without success.
"For years, we have been shouting exactly about this situation that we are currently living in. What will happen when the day comes and we are attacked from the north, from Iran, from all?"
The Israeli army told AFP it had ordered changes in all industrial areas in the north, without giving details.
"As a precaution, it was decided to monitor, examine and limit the transportation of materials in several factories in the north," it said when asked about the Haifa industrial area, adding that "the directive does not refer to a total cessation of activity".
It said the Home Front Command, which is responsible for civil protection, "maintains constant contact" with all the facilities, including "daily examinations" to keep "a complete picture ... of the inventory of hazardous materials".
Tashan, the state-owned company responsible for the oil storage site, did not respond to AFP requests for comment.
The private Basan Group, which is in charge of the adjacent oil refinery, closer to downtown Haifa, told AFP it was applying army directives.
- 'A big bomb' -
The information vacuum around the nature and quantities of substances handled at Haifa's industrial zone had already fuelled concerns before the war.
Independent media Mekomit denounced a culture of "repression" and "concealment" that it said could bring about an incident like the Beirut port explosion of 2020.
An enormous explosion of ammonium nitrate fertiliser that had been stored haphazardly for years in the Lebanese capital's port killed more than 220 people and devastated a wide area of the city.
Raja Zaatry, a Haifa city councillor, remembers the battle with private and government companies to get ammonia stocks relocated to the Negev desert.
"Haifa municipality demanded and forced these factories to reduce the amounts and especially in the areas that are near the neighbourhoods," he says.
Even then, Zaatry, like Sonny and Laufer, admits he does not know exactly what happens in the industrial area.
"I don't know exactly what are the materials, but we know it's dangerous materials and it's making also pollution. And in case of war, it can become a big bomb," he says.
The fact that Haifa's industrial area sits next to one of the largest ports in the eastern Mediterranean also stokes fears of environmental disaster, Laufer said.
In the meanwhile, despite the smell and the fear of explosion, Sonny says he will stay put because "it's our home".
One of his biggest regrets is the music gigs cancelled because of the war.
"There is no music, there is no rock and roll," he says.
P.Cavaco--PC