MANILA (AFP): Filipina caregiver Charlot David made the run back and forth to the bomb shelter several times before deciding it was better to simply stay there.
The 44-year-old mother of four, who has lived through "several wars" since moving to Israel in 2008, knew exactly what to do when the ear-splitting alert on her mobile phone first woke her on Saturday.
"Our flat is three minutes away from the bomb shelter, so we really have to run fast," she told AFP in a video interview from her employer's home in Rehovot, a city 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of Tel Aviv.
The caregiver is one of an estimated two million overseas Filipino workers, or OFWs, in the region, sending billions of dollars in remittances home each year to families in the Philippines that depend on them as the primary breadwinners.
"There were several alerts until we concluded, OK, this is no joke. It's Iran. So, we decided to stay inside the bomb shelter," David said.
Eight months earlier, a neighbour had not been so lucky when hostilities first erupted between Iran, Israel and the United States.
"A ballistic missile hit our area, a flat occupied by Filipinos ... A fellow Filipina died there, our neighbour," she said, calling the experience deeply traumatic.
Anita Bautista, who said alerts had sounded "from morning until dawn", told AFP the latest conflict was "more scary" than others she has lived through in her 12 years in Israel.
"Before, (the missiles) were not hitting the ground, but now some people are getting killed," said the mother of two who works in the Tel Aviv suburb Petah Tikva.
On Sunday, the new outbreak of hostilities claimed their first victim from the archipelago nation of 116 million: Mary Ann Velasquez De Vera, a 32-year-old caregiver killed as she attempted to escort her elderly ward to an Israeli bomb shelter.
Filipinos working in Dubai and Bahrain who spoke to AFP that day described being woken by window-rattling explosions and witnessing drones zipping overhead before exploding into nearby buildings.
The Philippine government said Monday there were no plans in place for wide-scale repatriations -- an expensive and logistically complicated proposition.
However, about 80-100 OFWs working in the United Arab Emirates were seeking repatriation, with a similar number of requests from Israel, migrant workers secretary Hans Leo Cacdac told an afternoon briefing.
But Josie Pinkihan of labour rights group Migrante International urged broader action.
"Before the Iran-US war worsens, our countrymen should be repatriated now," she said in an interview at the group's Manila headquarters, saying the scale of evacuations demanded the process begin immediately.
David, the caregiver, however, said she could not envision leaving Israel unless she had "no choice".
"We have families in the Philippines who rely on us," she said. -- AFP
