A Ukrainian fled to Israel. An Iranian missile shattered her new life

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) – When Tetiana Kurakova fled Ukraine weeks after Russia invaded in 2022, she thought she had left behind buildings with gaping holes, streets lined with rubble, and the fear felt while hiding from airstrikes.

In Israel, friends helped the 40-year-old makeup artist relaunch her career, and she slowly built a life in the coastal city of Bat Yam.

But early Sunday, an Iranian missile tore through the building next to hers, killing nine people, wounding dozens, and damaging or destroying hundreds of homes, including Kurakova’s.

It was the deadliest single strike from Iran in seven days of conflict, which began Friday when Israel launched airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear and military sites as well as top generals and nuclear scientists. Iran has fired some 450 missiles and hundreds of drones in retaliation.

Days later, staying in a hotel in nearby Tel Aviv with 250 other evacuees from Bat Yam, Kurakova cried when she recalled the strike, which sheared the face off of a multistory apartment building and destroyed many buildings around it.

“It felt like a nightmare. I can’t even describe how big it was,” she said. “I had a panic attack. I just sat on the road, leaned on (my friend) Masha, and started to cry, to sob from all the misery that had happened.”

Kurakova is one of around 30,000 Ukrainians who have made Israel their home since Russia’s war in Ukraine began, about half of whom have gained citizenship through their Jewish heritage, according to Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration.

Kurakova, who does not have citizenship, left home via Poland after about a month spent hiding from constant strikes in early 2022. She ended up in Israel, where she had a number of friends and some professional contacts.

Five of the victims in the Bat Yam strike were Ukrainians from the same family who had come to Israel to escape the war and receive medical treatment for a 7-year-old girl who had blood cancer, Israeli media reported.

The Ukrainian Embassy in Israel would not provide details on individuals, citing privacy concerns. It said it was working to repatriate the bodies, but faced challenges because Israel’s airspace is closed due to ongoing attacks.

Bat Yam has a large population of residents from the former Soviet Union, many of whom emigrated in a wave in the early 1990s, and was a natural place for many newly arrived Ukrainians to settle.

The working-class city is centrally located but the cost of living is lower than in Tel Aviv, next door. But older buildings in such cities – and in Arab towns and rural arras – often lack adequate shelters, though anything built since 1993 is required to have reinforced safe rooms.

More than a year after Kurakova arrived in Israel, Hamas attacked the country’s south, igniting a war in the Gaza Strip. She recalled being frightened in the early days after the militants’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack. The fighting was just 60 kilometers (37 miles) to the south, and some nights, she could hear the booms from Gaza.

But she wasn’t prepared for it to hit so close to home.

In the fighting between Israel and Iran, 24 people in Israel have been killed and hundreds injured. Missiles have struck 40 sites, including apartment buildings, offices and a hospital, according to Israeli authorities. Air raid sirens have repeatedly forced Israelis to run for shelter.

Meanwhile, panicked residents of Iran’s capital have spent restless nights in metro stations and thousands have fled. More than 600 people, including over 200 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 1,300 wounded, according to a Washington-based Iranian human rights group.

Kurakova said the past few days have brought her right back to the early days of Russia’s invasion.

“I don’t even stop seeing dreams that I’m hiding somewhere, running from Shahed drones, bombs, and looking for shelter somewhere,” she said, referring to the Iranian-made drones used against both Israel and Ukraine.

In Bat Yam, the force of the blast blew out windows and damaged the walls of Kurakova’s second-floor apartment.

She was able to salvage a few belongings, but because of structural concerns, it isn’t clear if she will be able to return home. Some 5,000 Israelis have been displaced across the country after missiles destroyed or damaged homes, according to the prime minister’s office.

Kurakova’s mother, still living in the part of the Donetsk region of Ukraine under Russian occupation, has urged her daughter to leave Israel and move somewhere, anywhere else. Kurakova still hasn’t decided what to do.

“I feel terrified inside and outside. I feel terrified by the hopelessness,” Kurakova said, adding that while she had previously taken comfort in Israel’s air defense systems, now she wasn’t so sure.

“That was the reason I left Ukraine,” she said. “I didn’t understand that it was possible here.”