British tourists in Dubai have recounted harrowing experiences of missile blasts, roaring fighter jets, and the need to shelter underground as the region became engulfed in conflict.

Upon their return to the UK on Friday evening, these travelers were welcomed with heartfelt embraces and signs reading “welcome home,” as they recounted their escape from the tumultuous Middle Eastern landscape.

While Dubai is often hailed as “the safest city in the world,” recent conflict has shattered this perception, with a wave of Iranian kamikaze drone assaults creating an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty.

The escalation began on February 28, when Tehran launched strikes against American military installations throughout the Middle East, retaliating against a joint US-Israeli initiative aimed at halting Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Saturday’s attacks in Tehran tragically resulted in the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, marking a significant turning point in the conflict.

In response, the British government has been working on plans to evacuate over 140,000 registered citizens from the Middle East, prioritizing their safety amid the escalating tensions.

Some Brits trapped in Dubai made it home on Thursday night, landing at Heathrow Airport where family greeted them in emotional reunions.  

Sable Cooper, 31, and Brandon Cooper, 34, from Wickford, Essex, had been away for ten days in Dubai with their three children, aged six, two and one.

They were greeted with hugs by their relieved family, bearing signs, after the Virgin Atlantic plane landed at Heathrow.

The family were lucky to make it on the flight they originally bought as some friends on holiday in the Emirati city at the same time had been forced to rebook.

‘It’s been a stressful process because we’ve been travelling with three small children so that added on top of everything else has been extremely difficult,’ Mrs Cooper told the Daily Mail.

‘The hotel were good, they were very helpful, they were very accommodating but obviously, we just wanted to get home as quickly and as safely as we could.’

The Coopers were staying at the iconic Atlantis, The Palm hotel, on the luxurious Palm Jumeirah island resort.

It is only around three miles from the Fairmont The Palm hotel, which is on the same archipelago complex, and was hit by debris from an Iranian missile on Saturday.

Minutes before the first emergency alert came through that day, they opened the doors to their balcony in their 14th-floor room to see a rocket flying across the sky.

‘It looked like a giant firework,’ Mr Cooper said. ‘We were very scared.’

His wife added: ‘We were petrified. Absolutely petrified. We already had emergency bags packed and we just grabbed the children and got down to the ground floor.’

A conference room below the hotel was converted into a kind of bunker, with the holidaymakers staying at the Atlantis sleeping there at night to stay safe. 

‘The first night it happened, we were literally just sleeping on the floor with just some towels,’ Mr Cooper said, given the suddenness of the initial strike.

Hotel staff soon installed tea, coffee and 24-hour food facilities in the space, along with proper beds, which the family slept in on the second of two nights they spent in the makeshift bunker. 

They were joined by what they estimated to be 200 other tourists who were staying at the hotel. 

The Coopers were eventually moved to a normal room lower down in the building, on the fifth floor, where they stayed safely for the rest of their holiday.

‘They made us very comfortable… They did what they had to do really,’ Mr Cooper said.

Unprecedented footage of drones exploding, hotels burning and missiles being intercepted mid-air has captured the outside world on social media. 

But missile sightings have become a regular occurrence for all who are trapped in Dubai, including influencers who moved to the city in search of glamorous, tax-free lifestyles while talking down the UK. 

One couple told the Daily Mail how they were ‘right in the middle’ of the terrifying scenes coming out of Dubai. 

Angela Clarke and her partner Brian Hill, from Colwyn Bay, north Wales, had returned to Heathrow from a nine-day holiday in Dubai on the same Virgin Atlantic flight as the Coopers. 

The cleaning business owner and retiree were staying by the water, a popular tourist hotspot, when they saw their first missile three days into their trip.

‘It was pretty terrifying. I saw one of the rockets go over. We were very much by the marina, basically right in the middle of things,’ Ms Clarke said.

‘It started on Saturday afternoon. We went down to the beach and we were walking over by the marina and the bridge when the first drone went off.

‘It looked like a firework. It was pretty terrifying. We didn’t get much sleep at all.

‘Emergency alarms went off on our phones that evening at about 12.30am. Petrified.

‘We were in a hotel where we were on the 19th floor out of 22.

‘And the day after again, that was when my partner saw the rocket outside our hotel go off and more drones intercepted as well. We were quite central.

‘We had a very small swimming pool so we really couldn’t sit out. They were advising people to stay indoors anyway.’

The couple, fortunately, managed to get back to the UK on the original flight they booked. ‘We were lucky,’ Ms Clarke said. 

‘The security was tight, very, very good. We’re lucky really for the UAE to be knocking those drones out to be honest with you. 

‘We were looked after while we were there, by the hotel also.’

Another family told how they ‘just got used to’ the missiles flying overhead as fighter jets scrambled to bring them down – while sun-seekers continued to party on the ground.  

Karolina Buhtina and Dominic Adair had also been on a nine-day holiday to Dubai with their three children, returning on the same Virgin Atlantic flight to Heathrow.

They were lucky not to face too many difficulties in their travel and holiday itself – they were staying on Al Marjan Island, which is slightly further out of the centre of Dubai, to the north.

‘Some of my friends who live in Dubai, they were travelling north because where we were, it was quite quiet on the first day,’ Mr Adair said.

‘We didn’t have any disruption to be honest. 

‘There was a bit of confusion between the airline and the travel agency about whether we should get on the flight or not but apart from that, it’s been as planned.’

Ms Buhtina added: ‘Luckily, we made it!’

She said the family saw several attacks while they were there: ‘It was so weird because everyone just got used to it.

‘You would hear them, you would hear the bangs in the sky. It’s mad explaining it to someone.

‘You would hear the bangs in the sky and you would look up and see the trails and then jets just flying by.

‘But to be honest, we still went ahead. At our hotel, everyone was always outside. But we did avoid it in the evenings. 

‘I was having anxiety, I thought, “I don’t want to stay out at night”, so after dinner, we would just go to bed but everyone was just partying outside.’

Mr Adair added: ‘Some people were panicked, especially when it first started. As the days went on, I think everyone became a bit immune, as mad as it sounds.

‘When the jets first started popping out, you could hear them really rumble through the air.’

Ms Buhtina said: ‘The first time I heard it, we were on the beach with the kids and I heard the bangs. I grabbed the kids, grabbed the stuff and I started running.

‘Everyone was just looking up at the sky and no one was moving apart from me! I said, “Kids!”, I left him, I left him with all the sand toys, everything, and ran inside.’

Jess and Ian, from Wandsworth, south London, were greeted by their three children at Heathrow on Thursday evening after returning from Abu Dhabi.

Their flight home was delayed by four days – but the five-star St Regis hotel where they were staying put them up for the extra time free of charge. 

This included food and, unusually, even three pieces of laundry a day.

The couple heard the strikes throughout their extra time in the Emirati country. 

They described hearing ‘a barrage of missiles’, for instance, in the middle of the night on Sunday.

The pair called the hotel and the UAE government ‘brilliant’, compared to the UK Foreign Office. 

They pointed out it took the government days to charter the first evacuation flight for the more than 140,000 Brits who had registered as being in the Middle East.

Namrata Dehegde had flown home to Heathrow from Abu Dhabi on Thursday evening with her partner and son nearly a week after the family was originally set to return.

The Emirati city was only supposed to be a stop-over point for them as they transferred flights on their return from a holiday in India.

She said they were originally set to fly on February 28 – the day the US-Israeli strikes began.

‘It happened a couple of minutes before we were due to get on our flight,’ she said.

‘Some people had boarded as well – we were in the queue to board but then the queue stopped and we couldn’t board.’ 

The family soon joined thousands whose flights had also been cancelled in a queue to book last-minute hotels. 

They ended up taking matters into their own hands and booked their own rooms.

She continued: ‘We got outside and the luggage was obviously a mess! 

‘They had organised queues of school buses to take people to their hotels, kilometres long queues of school buses, and another queue of people inside waiting to get on these buses.’

Luckily, they were able to get a lift from friends who live in Abu Dhabi to their hotel, where they stayed for four days awaiting news of further flights.

‘The government did it really well because they said they would sponsor everything,’ Ms Dehegde said.

‘They paid for the hotel rooms, they paid for breakfast, lunch and dinner so it was brilliant, really good provision, we felt very well looked after by the hotel.’ 

It was hotel staff who gave them the vital information about evacuation routes – that was how they found out their eventual flight home was available.

Ms Dehegde said reception suddenly called them at 4am on Thursday morning to tell them they might finally be able to flee.  

‘They said, “There’s a bus leaving in one hour, if you get on that, you might get out today”,’ she explained. 

Terrifyingly, while the family was at the airport, there was a ‘mini-scare’ over a missile interception above the terminals, she said.

‘The airport is all glass so it was a bit scary. We literally had to shelter in the airport. I thought, “Oh, the flight isn’t taking off today either”, but then it did!’