Israel's battle with Hezbollah became frighteningly real on Wednesday for people in Tel Aviv, who awoke to the wail of sirens when the Lebanese militia fired a ballistic missile at their city.
There was little time to react when the warning sounded just after dawn at 6.30am.
"We rushed to the shelter downstairs, like we went down about three floors. And it was of course very scary," said Alon Neubach, who lives in a suburb of the Israeli commercial capital.
Neubach's office is next to the Mossad intelligence agency base that Hezbollah said it targeted with its missile, and which the army said was intercepted.
"I'm more scared about these rockets because I know they're more powerful and more accurate," said the 41-year-old tech worker.
He was comparing Hezbollah's arsenal with that of its Iran-backed ally Hamas, which has fired rockets towards Tel Aviv since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7.
But at the same time, nearly a year later, Neubach said he's "kind of tired of being scared and stressed, so I'm just like...I'm doing what I'm doing" — and he headed to the office.
The surface-to-surface missile was the first ever fired by Hezbollah to reach Tel Aviv, Israel's military said.
Millions of people had to take refuge in bomb shelters, government spokesman David Mencer said.
"This was a Hezbollah long-range advance missile fired indiscriminately towards millions of our people," he added.
Many people in Tel Aviv reacted like Neubach — after the initial scare, it became business as usual in the country's commercial hub.
Workers headed to their offices, bathers swam in the Mediterranean off the city beaches, young people played sport in parks and cafe terraces filled up again.
Noam Nadler, a 27-year-old law student, said in Tel Aviv she is from northern Israel where rockets from nearby Lebanon fall daily.
The Magen David Adom, Israel's first responders, said two people were wounded by shrapnel in the north on Wednesday, one seriously and one moderately.
"I've lived up north for most of my life so I think I'm kind of used to this," she said.
"But then (rockets) reaching the centre of the state is definitely scarier," she added.
Like Neubach, Nadler ran to a shelter, but the experience also had her thinking.
"It seems like it's before like a bigger blow, so I guess everything is a little more tense."
Hedva Fadlon is 61 years old and retired. She said it did not matter to her whether the rockets came from Gaza or Lebanon.
"We are used to it, whether it comes from the south or the north, it doesn't matter, rockets are still rockets," she said.
"They are just as frightening, stressful and unpleasant. I don't think anyone in this world would like to live like this."
Wednesday was the first time Hezbollah claimed a ballistic missile strike against Israel since its campaign began nearly a year ago in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas.
Longtime foes Hezbollah and Israel have been locked in near-daily cross-border exchanges of fire since Hamas attacked Israel last October 7.
In Israel's northern city of Safed, where rockets caused damage several times this week, Yuri Fligelman came face-to-face with the reality of a Hezbollah attack.
When a rocket hit a neighbour's house in the outskirts of the city on Wednesday morning, "there was a tremendous explosion and we heard the fragments falling on our roof".
But Fligelman says he will not leave home. "I don't want to leave, I'm gonna fight the Hezbollah," he said. "Who else, if not us?"
Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Of the 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel's retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,495 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to data provided by the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The UN has described the figures as reliable.
