Tel Aviv has been thrust into a nightmare after an Iranian missile salvo packed with cluster warheads ripped through central Israel, leaving a trail of blasts, smoke and devastation across the Gush Dan metropolitan area, defence officials say.

Sirens wailed just before midnight as radars picked up multiple launches from western Iran. Within seconds, Iron Dome and David’s Sling batteries were firing at full tempo, bright interceptors clawing into the sky. But when several heavy missiles burst over the city, they scattered hundreds of bomblets across central districts that no shield was built to stop one by one.

Residents described the attack as “pure terror.” Rapid chains of sharp, staccato explosions marched across car parks, playgrounds and side streets from south Tel Aviv toward Ramat Gan and Givatayim. Viral videos show burning vehicles on Dizengoff, shopfronts blasted open, and apartment towers pockmarked with shrapnel scars, their stairwells choked with dust and panic.

Emergency services report multiple fatality clusters and dozens of seriously wounded, many struck by fragments while running for shelters or cut by glᴀss in safe rooms that turned into shrapnel traps. Fire crews battled simultaneous blazes at an industrial strip near the Ayalon highway, a crowded market and several residential blocks, as bomb squads fanned out to isolate unexploded submunitions in courtyards and schoolyards.

The IRGC is hailing the strike as “a lesson written in blood in the heart of Zionism.” Israeli leaders accuse Tehran of deliberate war crimes, promising a crushing response on Iran’s missile infrastructure. For central Israel’s shaken residents, tonight’s question is far more immediate: if cluster bombs can turn downtown Tel Aviv into a patchwork of craters in a single wave, what will the next barrage bring?