LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Since Israel's surprise attack that killed Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran has been launching missiles at Israeli cities. At least 10 people in Israel have been killed so far. NPR's Daniel Estrin reports from Israel on what it's like to be under Iranian missile fire.
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: We're in the middle of Tel Aviv. We've just gotten alerts on our phones that a missile is expected to land in Israel.
(SOUNDBITE OF AIR RAID SIRENS)
ESTRIN: And there are the sirens. We're going to go down into the public shelter. Let's go. We're going just a couple of floors underground. You can see the reinforced concrete. This is a large public shelter - multiple rooms. A lot of people here with their dogs, their cats, reading books, eating their morning cereal.
HILA SHAPIRA: We decided to sleep in the shelter this night.
ESTRIN: Hila Shapira (ph) didn't want to be running in and out of the shelter when sirens go off.
SHAPIRA: And to do it in the middle of the night while I'm eight months pregnant is just too much.
ESTRIN: She and her partner, Ori Iscovici (ph), are thinking about the decision to launch a war with Iran.
ORI ISCOVICI: I'm hopeful about it, that it will bring a better future for them, and maybe it will be start of a long-desired change for the people of Iran that will...
SHAPIRA: They all (ph)...
ISCOVICI: ...Get some the freedom.
SHAPIRA: Yeah.
ISCOVICI: And if what it takes that - is that we sit here a little bit, it's totally fine.
SHAPIRA: If this war is going to help Iran, then I can survive it. But I don't know. We're really tired.
ESTRIN: Tired is a word you hear a lot down in Israel's shelters. Netta Dafna is a therapist.
NETTA DAFNA: Tired of wars keeping happening and feeling out of control because it's not our decision to go to war or to end war.
ESTRIN: And that war has been deadly in Israel. A missile landed on a public shelter Sunday in a city outside Jerusalem. Nine people were killed. Another missile attack in Tel Aviv killed a caregiver from the Philippines. We visited the scene.
The blast radius is enormous. The missile fell in the center of a street. A building has been gutted. The outer wall has been blown off. You can see through into the apartments that have been destroyed.
Shay Shor (ph) lives nearby.
SHAY SHOR: I want the Iranians to be free.
ESTRIN: But he's concerned Israel's killing of Supreme Leader Khamenei might not achieve that.
SHOR: We killed their leader, but the leadership in Iran is not completely destroyed, and within a few months, they're just going to come back. Next year is going to be the same thing - same story, same kind of war.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
ESTRIN: Saturday's missile attack shattered windows blocks away. We follow a trail of debris into a ground-floor apartment.
ASSAF PERETZ: In my kids' room, all the ceiling crashed.
ESTRIN: Assaf Peretz (ph) is a documentary filmmaker. Like in his work, he's taking the long view.
PERETZ: Maybe in a few months' time, we will be able to look backward and to understand what really happened. Yeah, Khamenei is dead, so it's big, right? But now I'm inside my debris here and inside my house, and this is where my focus is. It's a game that we are not truly understand.
ESTRIN: In a few months, he says he'll ask himself, is it over? Has Israel eliminated all the threats against it and have more than two years of constant war been worth it?
Daniel Estrin, NPR News, Tel Aviv. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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