Jerusalem, 19 March, 2026 (TPS-IL) — The foreign worker killed in Wednesday night’s missile barrage has been identified as Chaiwat Waewnin, a Thai national.
Waewnin, who was in his 30s, was working in the agricultural fields of Moshav Adamin in central Israel on Wednesday night when he was killed by shrapnel from a cluster bomb.
The Magen David Adom ambulance service said he was found unconscious with severe injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene.
“When we arrived, we were led to an agricultural area where there had been a strike in a shed,” said MDA paramedic Idan Shina. “Metal fragments were scattered around, and nearby, a man was lying unconscious with very serious shrapnel injuries. Despite our efforts, we had to declare him dead at the scene.”
Roughly an hour earlier, a separate strike hit the Palestinian town of Beit Awwa, near Hebron, killing at least four women and wounding more than a dozen others, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. Reports indicated a cluster bomb struck a structure used as a beauty salon, where women had gathered ahead of the upcoming Eid al-Fitr holiday.
They were the first Palestinian fatalities since the outbreak of war on February 28.
Cluster warheads break apart in the air, dispersing dozens of smaller explosive submunitions over a wide area. Israeli officials say the bomblets can spread across a radius of roughly 10 kilometers (about six miles), striking multiple targets simultaneously. Critics argue that the submunitions cannot reliably distinguish between military and civilian areas and often fail to detonate, leaving unexploded ordnance that can kill civilians years later.
While they are banned by the Convention on Cluster Munitions of 2008, several countries, including the U.S., Russia, China, Israel, and Iran, have never ratified the treaty and are not party to it.
At least 21 people have been killed in barrages, and around 4,000 more injured.