Belizeans in Israel During Hamas-Israel Conflict
On Saturday morning, the terrorist organization Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel. Gunmen breached security barriers and over two thousand missiles were launched from Gaza. Hours after the Palestinian attack, Israel’s air force retaliated with air raids in Gaza. Over sixteen hundred people have been killed in the war during the course of the last four days. The decades old conflict has reached yet another breaking point. A Belizean couple touring Israel with a group of friends was in Tel Aviv, Israel when the first rounds of missiles were launched from Gaza. Those rockets landed some forty miles from where they were staying, but they heard the sirens and the blasts. Shelly Usher, a resident of Belmopan, told us that everyone around them were in panic.
Voice of: Shelly Usher, Belmopan Resident
“Saturday we woke up the morning and we were heading out to breakfast at about six thirty, seven in the morning. When we stepped out of the hotel room, we saw a lot of people in the corridor. First we heard a loud talking so I told my husband somebody talking loud on a cell phone, but apparently it was a PA system. But it is in Hebrew and we did not understand anything. We were going for breakfast so we stepped out the room and saw a lot of people in the corridor in their sleep clothes so I told him something happened out here. We were going for the elevator and people started to run so we run too. We were on the night floor and had to keep going. Some people were sitting on the stairs crying and just like they didn’t want to go anymore. We had older people. People on their phone talking their own language, we did not understand what they were saying but we did not stop. Then we realize something is wrong but we did not know what it was and we heard the siren, but we don’t come from a country with war so we don’t understand what that means. The siren was ringing so we had the siren ringing. We were running down the stairs and then we heard the bombs going off, the missiles hitting. We heard like six in the first round. When we were in the lobby we heard the second set of bombs, it was like another six or more. As soon as we finished breakfast we heard the sirens again and people started gathering again out of the restaurant. We saw people run from the beach and the sea and everybody gone for cover again. And then, you heard a couple more explosions and we knew something was happening but nobody knew what was happening. We just know bombs went off.”
