With smiles of relief and clearly suffering, refugees from Israel and repatriated Greeks with their children in their arms, arrived in the afternoon at “Macedonia” airport, with a flight that departed after a long delay from Tel Aviv.

THE Desi Varsano studied and lives permanently with her family in Jerusalem for the last 13 years. Mother of three minor children, four years old, one year old and just two months old, she describes to the Athenian/Macedonian News Agency, moments she says she had never experienced before.

“Unfortunately, the whole country is shocked. It’s really unimaginable what’s happening. Sirens were going off all the time, we had to run to the shelters with the kids. Many of our friends posted on Facebook and Instagram that they can’t find their people, they don’t answer their phone, they haven’t heard from them,” she notes.

As she says, it was very difficult to find tickets and travel to her hometown as a family. “We were in a city that is close to Jerusalem and it was difficult to find tickets. We weren’t sure we were going to fly until the last minute. The truth is that we came without a return ticket until things calm down and we can see how we will continue,” he explains.

“Fortunately our children are young, the oldest is four years old and he was asking us to go out and play. Not much – he still didn’t understand what was happening every time the sirens sounded, he thought it was an ambulance and that’s how we continued to say too”, she says excitedly.

Her mother stands next to her, truly relieved, and takes her grandchildren in her arms. She anxiously watched the events as her daughter was in Jerusalem with her children and her son in Tel Aviv. As they told her in the communications they had, “it had no precedent in the history of Israel, since the day the state was founded.”

“The children really felt very much in danger and that’s why they wanted to go back. They also have small children and the responsibility is very big when you are a parent. They were looking for a flight since Saturday night but they didn’t have to wait long at the airport, as the Israeli lines were consistent and kept them informed of when to depart,” he clarifies.

“The sirens were going off and they had to stay in the shelter and it was very difficult with the children. The shelters in the new apartments are inside the buildings so they weren’t in danger, but they couldn’t go out. My grandson, four, wanted to go in the park but that was impossible. There was a risk of a missile or a terrorist falling. The entry of the terrorists was something unimaginable. Incredible scenes of terrorism and the most “monstrous” thing is how they put it up,” she says in shock.

“I lived in a town south of the Gaza Strip“, said an American who lives in Israel, who described in shock what he experienced, “They killed whoever they found. They didn’t care if they were American, Canadian or German. I had a friend from Montreal, Canada who lived in Israel. He was killed by Hamas terrorists. The world must know that Hamas wants to kill anyone who lives in Israel. They don’t care about anyone’s origin. Rockets were falling all around us.”

“It was not in our plan to visit Greece. We live in central Israel. But the situation in the country is dramatic,” said another refugee from Israel, adding that “it’s sad. We hear stories all day on the news. We hear about people we know who are lost, we can’t take it… With every siren we had to go to the shelter to hide from the rockets. Some places around us were bombed.”

The flight with which they arrived in Thessaloniki was the only one of the three scheduled to take place today directly from Tel Aviv.