Michael Katz, 82, who was critically wounded in an Iranian missile strike on his home in Haifa in April, has died of his injuries, the northern municipality said on Wednesday.
Katz sustained his injuries in the same attack on April 5 that killed four members of the Gershovitz family.
He died at Haifa’s Rambam Hospital. His funeral is expected to take place in the northern city on Thursday.
The Haifa municipality said Katz worked for decades at Israel’s Rafael defense technology company, and “contributed to the security of the country.”
He is survived by his wife, Nina, who was lightly injured in the attack, his sons Itamar and Yoav, and six grandchildren.
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“From now on, I will live my life as half a human being, after 55 years of marriage,” Nina Katz mourned in a statement distributed by the municipality.
“It will not be easy, and I will forever miss the completeness that my beloved Michael brought to our life together, to our children and grandchildren,” she said. “Michael was a great person to be around, a man who loved life and knew how to enjoy it.”
“Everyone who met him fell in love with him immediately,” Katz added. “He will be missed not only by us, but also by everyone who knew him.”
Speaking to the Ynet news site, Yoav Katz recalled his father as “a man of the world who consumed art and culture in every free moment and visited dozens of countries around the world.”
Home Front Command search and rescue forces work amid the rubble of a residential building struck by an Iranian missile in Haifa, April 6, 2026. (Israel Defense Forces)
An Israeli Air Force probe found that the ballistic missile that was fired at Haifa on April 5 was not intercepted because it broke up in the air and its expected trajectory changed, causing the interceptors to miss the target.
A section of the missile, apparently the warhead, then struck a residential building, causing a partial collapse. However, the investigation found that the warhead did not explode.
Husband and wife Vladimir Gershovitz and Lena Ostrovsky Gershovitz, their son Dimitri Gershovitz, and his wife, Lucille-Jane Gershovitz, were all killed in the strike.
Including Katz, 22 Israeli civilians and foreign nationals were killed by Iranian ballistic missile attacks during Operation Roaring Lion, launched by Israel and the US on February 28, along with four Palestinians in the West Bank.
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