Tel Aviv has endured one of its most terrifying nights of the war after Iran fired a barrage of ballistic missiles armed with cluster warheads, with several breaching Israel’s vaunted air‑defence systems and showering neighbourhoods with bomblets, officials and witnesses say.

Sirens wailed across the Gush Dan metropolitan area as radar detected launches from western Iran. Iron Dome and David’s Sling batteries roared into action, turning the sky into a mesh of interceptors and fireballs. But when some of the heavy missiles ruptured over the city, they scattered hundreds of submunitions that rained down on streets, car parks and apartment courtyards far below the interception points.

Residents describe raw panic: parents screaming as they dragged children into stairwells, people diving behind cars as sharp cracks of dozens of near‑simultaneous blasts echoed between towers. Videos posted online show rapid chains of small explosions marching across residential blocks, cars on fire and shattered glass carpeting sidewalks.

Emergency services report multiple dead and scores wounded, many hit by shrapnel while running for shelters or cut by windows blown inward. Fire crews battled parallel blazes in industrial zones, shopping streets and dense housing estates, while bomb squads rushed to cordon off unexploded bomblets lying in playgrounds and building entrances.

Israeli officials admit “a limited but painful breach” of the defensive shield, accusing Tehran of “deliberate terror tactics” and vowing a massive response on Iran’s missile infrastructure. Human‑rights groups warn that saturating a packed city with cluster munitions almost certainly constitutes a war crime.

As smoke hangs over Tel Aviv and the sound of secondary detonations still echoes, one question now haunts Israelis and their allies: was this a shocking one‑off strike — or the grim template for how Iran plans to fight this war from now on?