Hello and welcome to Newshour it's coming to you live from the BBC World Service

studios in Central London I'm Tim Franks and you join us shortly after Iran has launched a major missile attack on Israel.

It was just over three hours ago that the alert alert went out, air raid sirens sounding across much of the country. This was the sound captured

in Israel's biggest city, Tel Aviv, as people raced for shelters. Within just a few minutes,

as missiles streaked across the Israeli sky, a distinctive orange flare from their

tails Israel's own air defence launched its ballistic interception system. It's difficult to tell from those explosions, whether they were mid-air

interceptions or whether they were of impacts on the ground from the incoming

ballistic missiles launched by Iran but we do know that there were impacts on the

ground. What we do know is that as the Israeli military has said some of the 180 missiles

did have hits.

The Israeli military has also said it will respond powerfully tonight.

Iran has carried out a serious act and is pushing the Middle East to an escalation.

Tonight's event will have consequences consequences said the Israeli military spokesman

Daniel Hagari. We often hear from Gershian Baskin and an Israeli hostage

negotiator on New-Newzer just after the missiles were fired he spoke to the BBC from a bomb shelter in Jerusalem.

I'm in West Jerusalem sitting in the bomb shelter of our house there were emergency warnings to go to

bomb shelters about 15 minutes ago over the last minutes we've heard non-stop

blooming of our heads in Jerusalem from what we we hear on the Israeli news, it's probably the anti- rockets

that are the missiles coming in from Iran. Right now, basically, the whole country of Israel

is in their bomb shelters. I must say listening to the names

of the towns and the cities that are getting warnings that we're also hearing the names

of Palestinian towns and cities both inside of Israel and in the occupied West Bank.

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