In the middle of a warm summer night, as explosions boomed and sirens wailed overhead, a brave operation unfolded. Gravely ill children, some hooked up to life-saving machines, were rushed to underground bunkers.
The corridors of Schneider Children's Medical Center in Petah Tikvah, Israel, were brimming as nurses and doctors moved with great urgency in a race to protect their patients.
In this region, such scenes are tragically familiar. Witnessing it up close in this children's hospital, though, was both extraordinary and heart wrenching - a Herculean effort to shield the most vulnerable from the violence above.
'My daughter has leukemia and she is more afraid of the missiles than the illness,' says Taufick Zangaria, whose nine-year-old daughter, Joory, is among the patients.
The little girl, whose name is a type of flower in Arabic, is two months into her treatment which consists of chemotherapy. As if that is not enough for her to contend with, today she - alongside hundreds of others - are being hurried into shelters underneath the hospital as the latest salvo of missiles are fired from Iran.
