People arriving in the UK from Israel have described the moment Hamas rockets started landing on their cities.
One woman cried as she said she and her husband mistook the air raid sirens for a false alarm before the explosions started.
Saturday’s attack on Israel by Hamas has seen a scramble for flights, travellers said, as people try to escape the danger.
Arriving at Luton on a flight from Tel Aviv on Thursday morning, one teenager from London said he waited for 16 hours for his flight home after a cancellation.
Jacob Lustbader, 26, who has been studying to become a rabbi in Jerusalem, will be staying with a friend in Manchester until he can fly home to New York.
The chemical engineering graduate told the PA news agency: “We had rockets landing in Jerusalem but none of them landed in a civilian area.
“There were sirens and we took cover. It’s the first time I’ve experienced it. It’s a very tense environment there at the moment.
“Every Israeli knows there are civilians in Gaza who are the victims of brainwashing by Hamas, but when you democratically elect a terrorist group there is no choice but to deal with it by force.”
Issac Lowry, 17, from Hackney, east London, had travelled to Israel for Sukkot, a Jewish holiday celebrating the autumn harvest.
The teenager’s parents are on a different flight back to the UK.
He said: “The situation is getting worse and worse.
“The airport was very full. I’ve had a cancelled flight; I waited 16 hours for a flight to get here today.
“When I was there, there were rockets. We had to go into bomb shelters. It was quite scary.
“I feel safe to be back in the UK. This is the first time I’ve experienced a war.”
A woman who was in the city of Rishon LeZion, five miles south of Tel Aviv, wept as she told PA about air raid sirens going off.
The woman, who did not give her name, said she was making coffee at about 6.30am when she heard the warning.
“My husband said, ‘What’s happening? Is there something wrong with the sirens?’
“Then it started. It’s very difficult for me to talk about.”
