Brit caught in Iran's revenge strike in Israel says she was buoyed by her ‘blitz spirit'
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A BRITISH woman caught in Iran's revenge strikes after the US atom plant attack told how she was buoyed by her 'blitz spirit' yesterday.
Nicola Simmonds, 58, was rocked by the biggest ballistic missile to blast Tel Aviv early yesterday.
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Nicola Simmonds, 58, was rocked by the biggest ballistic missile to blast Tel Aviv
Credit: Doug Seeburg
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Israeli emergency teams work at the site of an Iranian missile strike on a residential building complex in Tel Aviv
Credit: EPA
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Israeli emergency teams arrive at the scene and launch search and rescue operations
Credit: Getty
The tour guide told how fellow shelter dwellers gasped in terror as the explosion wrecked a low rise housing block and sent a blast of air through her bunker.
Nicola - who grew up in Mill Hill, North London but now lives in the Ramat Aviv suburb 10 miles north of the city centre - said: 'I've heard blast before in recent days but nothing like this.
'There was an enormous boom followed by a rush of air and we knew this was big and very close.
'But I'm British and my grandfather was a volunteer ambulance driver in the London blitz - so I strangely didn't feel as afraid as everyone else.
'It was against all advice but I, kind of, crawled out of my hole and found myself heading straight for the site of the explosion.
'It's strange but it really did feel like the blitz - what my grandfather had braved in London, I was now experiencing in Tel Aviv.'
A five storey block 600 metres from Nicola's home was devastated at 8am yesterday by an enormous Iranian missile strike.
Bedding, clothes and belongings hung from the blown out shell of a block with other buildings blackened, cars wrecked and glass and debris strewn across the neighbourhood.
The Sun's team took cover in a hotel shelter at 7.30am yesterday when sirens and alerts signalled the first revenge attack after Operation Midnight Hammer.
Walls of our shelter in the city centre hotel shook violently as a series of explosions ripped through the air above.
Wounded Iran immediately lashes out at Israel launching volleys of ballistic missiles causing 'large-scale destruction'
Ramat Aviv took the biggest hit of the attack in the bustling coastal city as families across the country cowered bomb shelters.
Gran-of-three Shevi Lahav - an 84-year-old holocaust survivor - told The Sun: 'I live on the fourth floor of a nine story block but don't know if I have a home to go back to now.
'I fled from the Nazis in Russian for two years in World War II and it's hard to believe I'm being attacked again.
'I was in the shelter but god knows what would have happened to me if I hadn't reached the shelter.
'But we won't give in - we didn't give in then and we won't give in now.'
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Tel Aviv residents shelter in a hotel bunker as Iranian missiles hit the Israeli city
Credit: Doug Seeburg
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