Dubai Is Finished, We're Not Coming Back: Expats Say As They Flee
🇦🇪 Expats claim they will leave Dubai and never return as they fear for their lives and see their businesses destroyed while missiles continue to rain down over the United Arab Emirates.
Once a tax-free haven attracting influencers from across the globe and thousands of Brits seeking warm weather and crime free streets, Dubai's carefully crafted image has been shattered and residents believe it is 'finished'.
The emirate, home to around 240,000 British expats including Rio and Kate Ferdinand, Luisa Zissman and Petra Ecclestone, has been targeted by constant Iranian missile and drone attacks as the regime strikes US allies in the Middle East.
Dubai has been the target of two thirds of Iran's missiles and three massive explosions rocked the city on Wednesday morning, with the international airport sustaining damage.
Four people were injured as two drones hit the terminal, while a string of major airlines cancelled all flights to the region for weeks.
Even the world famous Fairmont hotel on Palm Jumeirah was struck by Iran, while employees at western banks including Standard Chartered and Citi evacuated their offices amid threats from the Islamic Republic that they were the next targets of their bombing onslaught.
Four people have been killed so far and tens of thousands of residents and tourists have now fled in the weeks since the conflict began.
And those who remain face prosecution if they post videos of missiles overhead, despite constant phone alerts warning them to stay away from windows and seek shelter.
Dubai does not have vast oil reserves and relies on its expat population, which makes up 90 per cent of the city.
It has launched a desperate public relations campaign, telling people the 'big booms' in the sky are 'the sound of us being safe' as the UAE air defence system takes action.
But it has done little to quell fears.
'The shine has definitely been taken off,' John Trudinger, a British Dubai resident of 16 years, told The Guardian.
The headteacher employs more than 100 teachers from the UK at his Emirati school and claims most are so 'deeply traumatised and really struggling to cope' with the war that they have fled and will never return.
Taxi driver Zain Anwar saw his car destroyed in a missile attack and said his family are begging him to return home to Pakistan.
He said: 'I don’t want to be in Dubai any more, there is no business, we are earning nothing since this war, and I don’t see the tourism coming back.
'A lot of taxi drivers like me, we are thinking to go to a different country now. Everybody knows that Dubai is finished.'
Iran has continued to pound the city, sending 1,700 projectiles in two weeks, although 90 per cent have been destroyed by air defence systems.
But on Saturday, a drone was caught on video sending up a huge pall of smoke near the airport.
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