NATALIE LISBONA: Our app flashed a bright red warning. We had 90 seconds to get to safety – then the booms began after Iran attacked Israel with missiles

The morning was bad enough. I had one child at school, a teenager sick at home in the attic room asleep in bed, and I was at the doctor’s with the third.

Then, at 11am, the sirens went off.

I live near Tel Aviv, and Hezbollah rockets from Lebanon were heading for the city. I was convinced my teenage daughter in the attic would not hear the sirens and I wanted to make sure she woke up.

I rushed out of the doctor’s, leaving one child there in the surgery’s bomb shelter. I knew the one at school would be safe, too, in the shelter there.

But I was desperate to get home to rouse the one who was still exposed. I kept calling her from the street as I ran – and finally got through, telling her to go to the shelter in our garden.

Thank God. She was safe.

But I wasn’t. A massive explosion, the loudest boom you can imagine, went off, seemingly over my head. Some elderly people had fallen over trying to get into the shelter in time. I saw an old woman sheltering behind a car. I crouched down and waited.

Then, just as suddenly, we were given the all-clear and I headed home. As I say, an eventful morning.

That evening, though, the danger was back – this time the missiles were coming from Iran.

We first knew of it when an IDF spokesman put out a strong message on TV warning us. There followed more messages all over social media and on the news.

It was at 7.29pm that we knew for certain the threat was real. The Home Front Command app that we all have on our phones in Israel flashed a bright red warning. ‘You are immediately to enter a protected space in your area,’ it said.

It gave us one and a half minutes to get there.

So we headed once more to the bomb shelter in our garden – the three children, our dog SuperTed and me. As we reached the door of the shelter, a message flashed up on my phone saying the missiles from Iran were on their way. Flashes and booms began to go off everywhere as we entered.

People take cover on the side of a road as a siren sounds a warning of incoming missiles 

A man holds children as people take cover during an air raid siren

People take cover behind a vehicle parked along the side of a highway in Tel Aviv 

Although it is a large shelter, it is also stuffy, with forbidding concrete walls and a thick door. Outside we could hear the boom-boom of Israel’s fabled air-defence systems detonating as its missiles intercepted Iran’s incoming fire. It was desperately tense. We felt frightened, nervous it might fail.

What made it worse was an unusual crack-crack, pop-pop sound like gunfire going off. Moments before the Iranian onslaught I was reporting on a terrorist attack in Jaffa not so far away, where six had been killed and more wounded.

Could there be multiple terror attacks? Could we be facing another onslaught from extremists, like on October 7?

It was impossible to know. Our phones weren’t working properly because there was no wi-fi in the shelter and because of its thick walls. Our fears mounted. I have lived here for nine years and am used to running to the shelter. This time I felt helpless not knowing what was going on outside.

In April, Iran launched hundreds of ballistic missiles at us which were thankfully intercepted by the air-defence system and our Western allies including the RAF – which gives me a deep sense of pride because my grandfather served in the Royal Tank Regiment and my great uncle Bob was stranded on the beaches of Dunkirk.

People take shelter during an air raid siren

After that attack there was little damage and I was to a certain extent in denial over what a ballistic missile could do. 

It wasn’t until I went to an army base afterwards to see one that I realised how vast they are (I estimate the length of a double-decker bus) and what havoc their warheads can wreak.

This time round I knew more about them.

We emerged from the shelter after 45 minutes to find the barrage was over – for now. And that three missiles had struck Tel Aviv out of the hundreds Iran fired at us.

Although there were no fatalities from those missiles in Tel Aviv, unfortunately a Palestinian man was killed in Jericho.

This attack was truly petrifying. My youngest daughter was crying in the bomb shelter as she tried to comfort the dog, which was shaking like Scooby-Doo.

It is not exactly a scene of domestic bliss, but it is what families in Israel face day after day. And it explains why we feel the likes of Hamas, Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies cannot be allowed to continue their attacks on us.