The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Hamas movement, announced on Tuesday that they struck the city of Haifa in northern Israel with the R-160 missile. So, what are the features of this missile?
The "R160," also known as "Rantisi 160," is a Qassam-developed missile manufactured in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. It was created by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military branch of Hamas, and was first used to repel the Israeli aggression on Gaza during the Operation of the Tenth of Ramadan in 2014, which was one of the operations of the "Protective Edge" campaign.
### Naming
This missile is named R160 in homage to the leader Abdul Aziz al-Rantisi, where the letter "R" signifies Rantisi, and the number indicates its range.
### Importance
The significance of this missile lies in the fact that it allowed, for the first time in the history of the conflict with Israel, to reach further areas, hitting deep Israeli territory, including the cities of Haifa and Hadera, which are more than 160 km away from the Gaza Strip.
### Reactions
Israeli military analysts and media referred to it as the "Doomsday Weapon." The term "Doomsday Weapon" has been used in the region for a long time to denote the capacity of entities fighting the Israeli state to possess modern and dangerous weapons impacting the Israeli populace.
This was evident through the analyses provided by Israeli media channels that followed the speech of the spokesperson for the Al-Qassam Brigades, bringing in analysts to study and attempt to understand the nuances of Al-Qassam's statements. All of them used the term "Doomsday Weapon" in reference to Hamas's weaponry.
