Some South Florida residents are stuck in Israel as the missile attacks continue between Israel and Iran.
“We can just hear the explosions in the sky, whether if it’s the defense systems intercepting missiles or whether it’s the missiles actually attacking critical infrastructure,” Alexander Rossian told Local 10 News.
Rossian is from Aventura but traveled to Israel with his parents, Karen and Zohar Rossian, to visit family. Their vacation, however, took a tragic turn.
“Maybe two or three times a day, we have these attacks from Iran, which are ballistic missiles that are capable of even destroying this bomb shelter if it’s a direct hit,” Alexander Rossian said.
He’s now grappling with uncertainty amid the fourth day of airstrikes.
“I’ve been through it before, but never with Iranian missiles, so this is an unprecedented time and it was an unprecedented stress that we’ve never experienced before,” he said.
Rabbi Yossi Harlig, the director of the Chabad Center of Kendall and Pinecrest, said his 20-year-old daughter Tova is finding refuge in Israeli bomb shelters.
“El Al and everyone canceled flights so she just sends me now, literally an hour-and-a-half ago (a message) saying one of her friend’s parents are arranging this and the message says a step-by-step guide traveling from Jerusalem to Egypt, get to the border,” he said.
She’s in Israel as part of a year-long studies program with a group of more than a dozen other South Florida students.
“Today is the last day of classes,” he said. “She was supposed to be in another short program for a week. That program closed down.”
Harlig said his daughter “wanted to really stand there, study there, have that experience and be able to proud Jew to be there and not run away from it.”
Harlig added, “My daughter would joke and say, ‘You don’t let me take an Uber here, but you sent me to Israel.’”
“Israel’s fighting a war,” he said. “Not just for Israel, but for the world.”
Iran fired a new wave of missile attacks at Israel early Monday, killing at least eight people, while Israel warned hundreds of thousands of people in the middle of Tehran to evacuate ahead of new strikes.
The warning came on the fourth day of the conflict, when the Israeli military claimed it had achieved air superiority above the Iranian capital and could fly over the city without facing major threats. The military has issued similar evacuation warnings for civilians in parts of Gaza and Lebanon ahead of strikes.
The warning affected up to 330,000 people in a part of central Tehran that includes the country’s state TV and police headquarters, as well as three large hospitals, including one owned by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office warned Israelis not to flee the country through any of the three crossings with Jordan and Egypt that are open to the Israeli public.
Despite having diplomatic ties with Israel, the statement said those countries are considered a “high risk of threat” to Israeli travelers.