Briton says she feels ‘safer in Dubai than in England’ and she or he went for espresso after Iranian bombs went off
A British woman living in Dubai has said she went for a coffee after Iranian bomb strikes – and that she feels ‘safer there than in England’ despite the threat of more aerial attacks.
Chelsea McCallister, 38, moved to the Gulf state in 2023 to work as a conveyancer for a real estate broker.
She described hearing the ‘loud bangs’ of Iranian missile and drone impacts but says the level of threat has been drastically overstated, Birmingham Live reported.
A night drone attack on two of Dubai’s most upmarket areas left one man dead and two residential skyscrapers in flames on Saturday.
Smoke plumed from the 88-storey 23 Marina tower building near Dubai Marina after it was hit by the debris from an intercepted Iranian drone.
Later, it emerged that a Pakistani driver was killed after material fell on his vehicle following a drone attack on the 19-storey Azayez Tower in the upmarket Al Barsha area.
Dubai International Airport was also forced to close on Saturday after a suspected Iranian drone strike triggered a huge explosion near the complex, with passengers ordered off planes.
British travellers were among those left stranded as flights were halted and terminals evacuated, leaving many scrambling to find a way out of the UAE.
Chelsea McCallister, 38, moved to the Gulf state in 2023 and says she feels ‘safer in Dubai than in England’ – despite the Gulf state being hit by Iranian missiles and drones over the last week
Smoke plumes from the 88-storey 23 Marina tower building near Dubai Marina after it was hit by debris from an intercepted Iranian drone on Saturday night
But despite the aerial bombardment that has rained down on Dubai, Ms McCallister says the threat has been drastically overstated and she has no intention of returning home.
The Briton says she is still going into work and said the day after Iran’s first strike on Dubai on February 28 she went about her daily routine as usual.
‘To put it into perspective, I visited my local supermarket, walked around the park and had a coffee the next morning,’ she said.
‘My mom’s struggling to sleep at night worried and I’m sat in a hairdressers. It’s not like there’s explosions with buildings falling down, it’s the defence systems doing their job.
‘I still feel safer in Dubai than in England. I couldn’t ask the government to do much more.’
Ms McCallister described hearing as ‘a loud bang’ which sounded ‘like thunder’ – and which several of her friends’ children mistook for fireworks.
She said the fact that multiple of her social circle heard the explosion despite living relatively far apart made them ‘a little scared’.
However she added that people claiming that it was so loud it felt like their eardrums were being perforated was an exaggeration.
The Palm Jumeirah hotel in Dubai was engulfed in flames after being hit by an Iranian suicide drone on February 28
Dramatic footage showed an interception near Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building
While some online commentators have criticised Britons living in Dubai for being naive to the risks of the region, Ms McCallister said the Emirate was safer and cleaner than the UK.
She said it had a better ‘quality of life’ and that no-one she doesn’t know anyone ‘who wants to go back [to the UK] anyway’.
Tens of thousands have been stranded in the Middle East following the start of the US and Israel’s joint campaign against Iran.
More than 140,000 Britons have registered their presence in the region with the UK government, who has faced a daunting logistical challenge to get them home.
An influencer trapped in a five-star hotel in Dubai has said Brits who have managed to flee the city ‘have been lucky’ as she faces a £3,000 bill in living expenses while she remains stranded.
Lily Mann, 25, arrived in Dubai with her boyfriend James Shires, 33, on February 26 with the intention of a week-long holiday.
The couple has since spent the last two days trying to navigate a way back home after their Etihad Airways flight to Manchester Airport was cancelled, leaving them to either pay upwards of £10,000 each for a one-way flight or to wait indefinitely.
Iran has unleashed a series of furious retaliatory strikes across the Middle East, launching attacks on Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Israel in a series of assaults that have left the region in flames.
Drones have struck oil facilities and airports in Iraq as US-led troops gunned down several potential attacks over the Kurdish city of Erbil amid warnings of possible attacks on hotels.
A network of Iranian-backed Shia factions, Islamic Resistance in Iraq, claimed it launched an attack on a US military base near Baghdad Airport ‘in retribution’ for the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian apologised to its Gulf neighbours on Saturday for targeting them with deadly drone and missile strikes and claimed the assaults would end unless they were used as bases to attack Iran.
However, Pezeshkian has faced major backlash within his own country, with many of Iran’s senior military figures unwilling to rule out additional attacks on other countries in the region.
