The devastation, caused by shrapnel from an Iranian missile according to the Israeli army, included houses being ripped open in one area.

Fifty-seven people were lightly injured by flying shards of glass, while one woman was moderately wounded, according to Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross.

Some areas in the farming village west of Nazareth were a landscape of ruins, shattered glass, twisted sheets of metal and uprooted trees.

A few locals watched the scene in disbelief. One of them, who gave his name only as Qusai, told AFP reporters in the village that families had no time to seek shelter when the missile shrapnel hit.

He said he had been on his way home after suhur, the pre-dawn meal Muslims eat during the fasting month of Ramadan, when he heard emergency sirens sounding.

"I went to the shelter in a friend's house and we heard a loud explosion. My mother called me and told me a rocket had hit our house. I ran and saw the house blown apart, on fire," the villager said.

"Everything was gone, it was completely destroyed, all the buildings in the neighbourhood," he added.

Qusai's donkey was killed, its black carcass lying next to a mangled enclosure.

Zarzir, like the rest of northern Israel, has long been exposed to rockets fired from southern Lebanon by militant group Hezbollah, an ally of Tehran.

Lying far from major Israeli cities which are equipped with shelters and sophisticated warning systems, people in the village have only a few seconds to run for cover when a launch is detected -- if they have a bomb shelter at all.

The region has also not been spared from Iranian missile fire targeting Israeli territory since February 28, in response to the military offensive being carried out by Israel and the United States against Iran.

In recent days, the Israeli army has reported coordinated missile launches against Israel directed simultaneously from Lebanon and Iran.

On Friday morning, only blackened walls remained of one grey cinderblock house in Zarzir, with a crumpled car in front. According to a rescuer, eight members of the family living in that house were injured.

A few metres away, a large hole had been gouged into the ground, three or four metres deep and five metres across.

Elsewhere in the village, women with tired eyes were busy sweeping up shattered glass from broken windows as well as other debris.