Some Lanzarote residents living in Dubai are experiencing the war conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran firsthand. This is the case of Marino Orlandi, who recounted this Tuesday on the program Good morning, Lanzarote of Radio Lanzarote - Onda Cero how he is and how he is experiencing this situation in the country, which has already left sixty injured and two dead in the city.
Orlandi decided to move to Dubai in September last year to start a business and is there alone with friends, as part of his family is in Lanzarote and another in England. Until now, "everything was within absolute normality," but on Saturday the authorities began to warn about the security situation. "What we thought at first was that the attack came from the United States, but the authorship is finally attributed to Israel, which is where Iran comes into play in a much stronger way," he explained.
"Here what are being received are ballistic missiles and drones... these latter ones are not detectable by radar and it is a bit the most dangerous, although they do not cause so much damage, but they are more difficult to shoot down", he/she has continued.
According to his testimony, on Saturday, when the conflict began, the young man was in another emirate and on his way back to Dubai they did hear news of attacks on the Emirati city. "What the Spanish embassy tells us from here is that the reprisals Iran takes are against the United States based on military and air bases, that is, that at no time were they going to carry out any type of attack on the civilian population", he assured.
"When we arrived in Dubai around 8:30 PM, we started to see how Iran was attacking the Fermont Hotel, on the Palm, and shortly after we saw the video that indeed there was a drone that impacted the hotel reception, whereupon there we already got worried because immediately after the attack on the Fermont on the Palm, all the information reached us directly," he declared.
In this sense, he recalled how they experienced the missile explosions. "We heard the explosions and yes, it's true that they sound as if they were falling to the ground because the sound of a missile and the sound of the explosion impacts a lot and generates a lot of fear," he said.
At the time of the explosions, the young man decided to stay in the area where he was "where there are a lot of expatriates, Americans, English or Italians." "We decided to stay there that night because it was where we arrived from the emirate we were in and we decided as a precaution not to take the car because my house is in a completely closed complex with security on the outskirts of Dubai and I am a little more in the desert area," he pointed out. Furthermore, he acknowledged that it was the best decision because on Saturday night we heard a missile at three thirty in the morning that woke us up because it exploded very close... on Sunday itself we woke up with the alert on the phone for the arrival of missiles and it told us to seek shelter," he recounted.
Despite Orlandi having highlighted that the first night was the most terrifying, he wanted to send a message of calm about the situation. "Of the approximately 600 missiles and 300 drones that the United Arab Emirates has intercepted, they have managed to neutralize around 90 or 95%," he specified. Regarding the injured from the missiles that have fallen, Orlandi has indicated that there are around sixty.
Some friends have decided to leave the country
This situation has been unexpected for the country because "this has caught us a bit by surprise, we didn't think at all that Iran would have any kind of retaliation against the civilian population here in the Emirates, but the reality is that it has caught us a bit in the middle". In fact, some of his friends have decided to leave the country and travel to Madrid or Casablanca "until this blows over a bit, because from the news we have read it seems that at least we have around two or three weeks of instability left".
In her case, she told the microphones of Good morning, Lanzarote that she is trying "to make the most intelligent decision." "If this ends up escalating it will become increasingly difficult to leave the country, but I'm not going to lie to you, we are living a relatively normal life because I wake up in the morning inside my complex with 24-hour security, I go to the gym, I go for a run around here and every now and then you hear the missiles, but we have not normalized it because it scares a lot, but we have a security within the uneasiness," she explained.
Therefore, their intention is to assess the situation at the end of this week and make a decision seeing if they enable part or all of the airspace. Likewise, he has highlighted that one can also leave the country by car crossing the border towards Saudi and take a flight there. "That is the decision we will ultimately make at the end of the week if things get more complicated because what did scare us a bit was the issue of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which causes the cost of oil and other things to increase because this is a passage for goods and oil of a very high percentage worldwide," he declared.
Finally, he highlighted the performance of the Spanish embassy, which warned the 30,000 Spaniards in Dubai in advance. "I am going to break a spear in favor of the embassy, although it is true that there is widespread discontent because the proactivity of the embassy is being relatively low and what it is doing is trying to communicate through social networks, but what is a phone call or personal contact with the people who live here, no," he indicated. "The first day, when we had not heard any missile, they were already telling us to seek shelter and we got scared, until four hours later we heard the missiles," he concluded.