A group of 100 Icelanders in Israel
The Icelanders are safe in the hotel in Jerusalem. Photo/Aldís Hafsteinsdóttir
“There are air-defense bunkers on each floor here, and we settled in after we saw the bomb here earlier,” Aldís Hafsteinsdóttir, the municipality’s mayor of Hrunamannahreppur, told mbl.is, but she is in a hotel in Jerusalem, Israel, with 90 other Icelanders.
The massive attacks by the Palestinian Hamas group began last night and about 5,000 missiles have been fired from the Gaza Strip to Israel in the direction of civilians and buildings. At least 22 people have died.
According to Sigurdur Kolbeinsson, the tour manager and the owner of the travel office in Columbus, the Icelanders are in a safe place at the hotel in Jerusalem.
Could feel the thunder of the bombs
Hafsteinsdóttir says that around 8 AM, the air raid sirens went off in Jerusalem and at 11 AM the Icelandic group could hear and feel the thunder of the boms.
“We think that boms were falling and we could see smoke rising up in an area a far looking out our window and we heard powerful bangs.”
The Icelandic group has gone to an information meeting about the situation and is not allowed to leave the hotel today. Originally it was planned that the group would spend a week in Israel but as it is, there is total uncertainty about the future.
Hafsteinsdóttir says that the group is fine, people are calm and they find themselves doing various activities to kill time.
There are air-protection bunkers on every floor of the hotel and following the explosions around eleven, many of them decided to stay there as a precaution.
“We Icelanders are naturally prone to not paying attention to anything and just wait it out. The alarm systems go off and you don’t move, the air raid sirens go off and you don’t move, but then you look out the window and we can actually feel two powerful bangs so we decided to tuck in the air-fighting bunkers,” she says.
Were in the conflict zone yesterday
Hafsteinsdóttir and her husband, along with several other couples, arrived in Israel a few days earlier and were in the southern city of Eilat, where the most intense fighting is now taking place. She said she had no idea how it would have ended if they hadn’t gone to Jerusalem before the attacks began.
Finally, she says that that the Icelanders give their best wishes to their family and friends in Iceland.
Hafsteinsdóttir has been posting videos on Instagram to keep people up-to-date on the situation from their hotel. She has a video, for example, of when the air raid sirens went off and the reactions after explosions.
