It's escalating so quickly Traffic stretches for miles as thousands flee Tehran

As Farhad and his friends left Tehran, they had plenty of time to survey the destruction.

- William Christou Deepa Parent Shah Meer Baloch AUTHOR

Smoke billowed from rooftops and flames flickered behind them as they inched their way through miles-long traffic to escape Israel's bombardment of Iran's capital city.Despite leaving early yesterday morning, it took Farhad six hours to reach his ancestral village - a journey that would usually take no more than two-and-a-half hours.

"Young children, elderly and sick grandparents, you found everyone stuck on the roads," Farhad, a 22-year-old student at a university in Tehran, said via text.

Another Tehran resident described a 10-hour journey fraught with worry as Israeli jets flew overhead. "All the way while I was stuck in traffic we were fearing: 'What if the strikes hits us on the highway? What if there are secret storage facilities around us?' The fear of not knowing created a lot of anxiety," said Mina, a 24-year-old finance professional in Tehran.

They are some of the thousands of residents who have fled Tehran since Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes on Iran early on Friday morning, which Israel said was aimed at preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Iran responded by launching a barrage of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel, sparking a steadily escalating tit-for-tat war.

Unlike Israel, which was well-prepared for Iranian ballistic missiles, Tehran has no dedicated bomb shelters. City authorities opened the metro as an ad-hoc shelter on Sunday and instructed others to head to mosques - though it was unclear what protection, if any, the above-ground shelters could offer.