An Irish woman who watched Iranian missiles streak past her Doha home said the uncertainty of the conflict in the Middle East has left her petrified and anxious.
Aine Little said the windows rattled as Iranian missiles were intercepted over the Qatari capital.
Speaking to RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Ms Little said the situation was made worse as the attacks were happening as her husband was driving home from work.
Relieving the terror, Ms Little, who is from Co Down, said "people were quite scared" from the moment emergency alarms pinged out from mobile phones on Saturday.
"People were quite scared" when the national alert alarms went off on everyone's phones, she said.
"Everybody's alarms were going at the same time, it's quite high pitched, it's a sound that will probably haunt me, to be honest," she said.
"It's quite an unsettling sound. You know, it makes you look at your phone right away with a little orange triangle with an exclamation mark inside it.
"But basically, the instruction was that there was a danger and that we were to shelter in place and find a safe place. Of course, then we had the missiles started to strike," she added.
Ms Little was alone when the missile attack began.
"I was home alone at the time and the house shook, the windows rattled. It was like someone had a very, very loud drum. In the sky, you could see the lines from the missiles and you could see the clouds where they had been intercepted. In some cases, you could see sparks like fireworks where they had connected with the missiles themselves," she said.
Her husband Scott was driving home. As he made the 15-minute journey she stayed on the phone talking to him until he got home.
"I'm not going to lie to you. I was hysterical... I was really afraid. My husband was out with a friend and I phoned him and I said, 'please come home'.
"So, he was on his way home as this was happening. I phoned him and asked him to stay on the phone with me just so that I knew he was safe because outside of where we live, we didn't know what was going on. We didn't know how long it was going to last. We didn't know how severe it was going to be. I was petrified on my own in the house in case something happened to him," she said.
"In real time, this all took about 15 minutes. He was great, he was trying to calm me down. He was saying, 'I'm on my way, I'm coming as quickly as I can, don't worry’ … as soon as he got home, I felt a bit better, you know," she added.
The couple heard more missile interceptions later that night.
"I have to say, at night time, it's an awful lot more unsettling. You're in bed, that's your safe space, that's where you relax for the night. And that's then, you know, when you're hearing that, it was quite jarring. The bedroom windows were rattling," she added.
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Ms Little and her husband are both teachers and will teach online for the foreseeable future.
However, she remains tense and anxious about what is happening.
"There's just that underlying anxiety. You know, when is it going to happen? Is this going to come to an end soon? You know, it's very unknown at the moment," she said.
She said authorities have tried to reassure people that they are safe.
"They're taking every precaution necessary to make sure that the residents are safe and that we're getting as much communication as they can give us," Ms Little said.
She added the Irish Embassy has contacted her through the Irish Society Qatar Facebook page.
As co-chair of the Qatar Irish Society, Ms Little said she is encouraging "all Irish residents within the region to register with the embassy so that they can make sure that they know exactly who's in the region".
Her husband, who is a coach with Qatar GAA, said: "It's been quite intense at times. We've seen lots of projectiles flying across the sky and being intercepted."
He said expats and Irish in Qatar are concerned.
"I wouldn't be telling you the truth if I said I wasn't concerned, but I do feel quite safe here in Qatar at the minute. Qatar have done a ... fantastic job of keeping everybody up-to-date, keeping everybody safe with the shelter in place and their efforts to ... deter and destroy anything that's coming in," he said.
He added what is happening is "a very extraordinary situation" and "on the day-to-day norm, the Middle East is a very safe place to be".
"You know, when we get all this out of the way ... I don't really have any concerns about safety in the Middle East," he added.
