‘We had to beat the drones': The race for Australians caught in Israel-Iran conflict
Melbourne lawyer Leon Zwier had only been in Tel Aviv a few days when sirens in the city blared to life. It was 3am on Friday, and a new front in Israel's long-simmering conflict with Iran had begun.
Within hours of Israel's attack on Iran, word came that Iran had sent back a retaliatory wave of drones. Suddenly, Zwier found himself leaping into a car for an early morning dash down the highway to Jerusalem, where he was due to attend a conference. 'We had to beat the drones there so we'd be off the highways when they hit,' said Zwier.
But en route, they learnt that 'the army had got the timings wrong' and the drones were even closer than they had thought. 'This wasn't the usual attacks from Iran's proxies like the Houthis. This was Iran, the big one.'
Fortunately, 'the Israeli Air Force shot those drones down', Zwier said. The economic conference he was attending was held in the basement of a hotel, so it went ahead as planned even as missiles continued to rain down overhead. 'The first event was actually about stress management!'
More than 1200 Australians are trying to get out of Israel and Iran as conflict escalates between the two nations – and flights remain grounded in both.
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Foreign Minister Penny Wong said there were 650 Australians and their dependants who have asked the government to help them get out of Iran and 600 people in Israel.
'We are making plans to assist Australians where it is safe to do so,' Wong told the ABC on Tuesday afternoon. 'But at the moment, the airspace continues to be closed, and the reason for that is the risk to civilian aircraft of a strike.'
One Melbourne mother on holiday in Iran when the fighting broke out is now stranded there, cut off from her young children, according to Kambiz Razmara, who is helping co-ordinate support for the Iranian diaspora at Australian-Iranian Society of Victoria.
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