TEL AVIV, Israel>> When Tetiana Kurakova fled Ukraine weeks after Russia invaded in 2022, she thought she had left behind buildings with gaping holes, streets lined with rubble, and the fear felt while hiding from airstrikes.

In Israel, friends helped the 40-year-old makeup artist relaunch her career, and she slowly built a life in the coastal city of Bat Yam.

But early Sunday, an Iranian missile tore through the building next to hers, killing nine people, wounding dozens and damaging or destroying hundreds of homes, including Kurakova’s.

It was the deadliest single strike from Iran in seven days of conflict, which began last Friday when Israel launched airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear and military sites as well as top generals and nuclear scientists. Iran has fired some 450 missiles and hundreds of drones in retaliation.

Days later, staying in a hotel in nearby Tel Aviv with 250 other evacuees from Bat Yam, Kurakova cried when she recalled the strike, which sheared the face off of a multistory apartment building and destroyed many buildings around it.

“It felt like a nightmare. I can’t even describe how big it was,” she said. “I had a panic attack. I just sat on the road, leaned on (my friend) Masha, and started to cry, to sob from all the misery that had happened.”

Kurakova is one of about 30,000 Ukrainians who have made Israel their home since Russia’s war in Ukraine began, about half of whom have gained citizenship through their Jewish heritage, according to Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration.

Kurakova, who does not have citizenship, left home via Poland after about a month spent hiding from constant strikes in early 2022. She ended up in Israel, where she had friends and some professional contacts.

Five of the victims in the Bat Yam strike were Ukrainians from the same family who had gone to Israel to escape the war and receive medical treatment for a 7-year-old girl who had blood cancer, Israeli media reported.

The Ukrainian Embassy in Israel said it was working to repatriate the bodies but faced challenges because Israel’s airspace is closed because of attacks.

Bat Yam has a large population of residents from the former Soviet Union, many of whom emigrated in a wave in the early 1990s, and was a natural place for many newly arrived Ukrainians to settle.

The working-class city is centrally located, but the cost of living is lower than in Tel Aviv, next door. But older buildings in such cities — and in Arab towns and rural arras — often lack adequate shelters, although anything built since 1993 is required to have reinforced safe rooms.

More than a year after Kurakova arrived in Israel, Hamas-led terrorists attacked the country’s south, igniting a war in the Gaza Strip. She recalled being frightened in the early days after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack. The fighting was just 37 miles to the south, and some nights, she could hear the booms from Gaza.

But she wasn’t prepared for it to hit so close to home.

In the fighting between Israel and Iran, 24 people in Israel have been killed and hundreds wounded.

Meanwhile, panicked residents of Iran’s capital have spent restless nights in metro stations and thousands have fled. More than 600 people, including more than 200 civilians, have been killed and more than 1,300 wounded, according to a Washington-based Iranian human rights group.

Kurakova said the past few days have brought her right back to the early days of Russia’s invasion.“I don’t even stop seeing dreams that I’m hiding somewhere, running from Shahed drones, bombs, and looking for shelter somewhere,” she said, referring to the Iranian-made drones used against both Israel and Ukraine.