Article originally in the Financial Times. Other articles .
Israel, in its command for the evacuation of a quarter in the center of Tehran, which contains studios of state television and other government buildings, reported little information. In a few seconds after the Israeli army published its warnings for civilians, many locals have flooded calls from their loved ones who verified whether they learned.
“We turn off the gas and water before evacuation!” A woman was screaming when she ran up the stairs of her building with her suitcase in her hand. “Hurry, Mom, we don’t have time,” she insisted on her mother in senior age. An hour later, fighters were seen above the Tehran suburbs. A few minutes later Iran’s state radio was hit.
Instead of five minutes two hours
After four days of bombing, many of the ten million inhabitants of Tehran have tried to escape from the capital. On the main roads from the city, the right stopped. Gasoline advice stretched to kilometers. The stock exchange and the historic big bazaar were closed.
Mina tried to escape to her daughter’s house east of Tehran, but after about seven hours of constipation she had to return home. The Hassan driver, trying to take someone to safety outside the city, said that “a journey that normally lasts five minutes” took almost two hours.
The authorities urged people to stay, where they are. They slowed the speed of the Internet to control the flow of information, and urged people to monitor the official news channels and ignore the evacuation reports that they believe are part of the “Psychological War” of the enemy.
According to the Ministry of Health, more than two hundred people have been killed in the strikes and hundreds of others have suffered injuries. Photos of civilian victims in large circumventing social networks. Many of them fled to the metro stations that serve as makeshift bomb hiding places.
Gasoline is few, the Internet is slow
Staff of banks, hospitals and police and military stations were ordered to stay in the city. “We got stuck here,” said the taxi driver Farhad, whose wife, a bank employee, was ordered to stay around the elevated emergency for possible cyber attacks.
Food racks are well stocked, but the lack of gasoline and diesel is a big problem. Authorities limit vehicles to a maximum of 30 liters of fuel. Officials say the deliveries have not been interrupted and insisted that this will not happen in the future.
Several city districts lost water supply on Sunday after the Israeli attack hit the main water pipeline, flooded the key conveyor artery and killed two civilians. Even government officials criticized the information closure, as a result of which people in panic could not contact their families or find roads from the capital.
Deputy Minister of Communications Ehsan Chitsaz on the social network X said he would like not to be limited, but apparently indicated that it depends on security services. “It doesn’t matter to the ministry,” he said.
They ask for the deployment of the troops
Despite the fact that there is order in many streets, some Tehranians ask for deployment of military units, because the government warnings against Israeli collaborators encourage paranoia. “It scares me that there is no strong police presence in the city,” one of the inhabitants said. “At this time, there should be control habitats everywhere in Tehran to feel safe.”
Many locals have no idea how to respond to attacks. Tehran was the target of attacks during the Iranian-Iraq War in the 1980s, but since then it has grown into a modern city with high-rise buildings, shopping centers and a living culture. It is not a city used to sirens and covers.
For children and young adults, such as 26-year-old daughter Maryam, the reality of the war is new and difficult to understand. “She simply can’t understand the concept of the war and is so scared,” Maryam said.
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