A WEST Belfast man has spoken about the moment he saw Iranian missiles fly over the Doha night sky.
Mickey Brady, who is originally from Lenadoon but has been working in the Qatar capital for over ten years, said that he and his wife, Deborah, were driving home from work on Monday evening when he heard loud bangs overhead and saw the lights of incoming missiles and bright flashes in the sky.
Iranian missiles were launched towards the Al-Udeid military base, the largest US military base in the Middle East, in response to the US bombing of three of Iran's nuclear programme facilities on Saturday evening. No-one was injured in the Iranian attack and the authorities in Qatar said that they intercepted all missiles.
The former Lámh Dhearg man, who is now chairman of Qatar GAA, told RTÉ: “I was actually driving home with my wife. We were coming back to the house. There had been some awareness on social media that this was coming.
“As we were driving a few minutes from the house, we noticed these loud bangs and thuds. So we turned around and were able to see all the rockets in the sky, and so we quickly came back to the house, as there had been a warning for people to seek shelter.
“And then when we looked out, when we did get back to the house, we were able to see a lot of interceptions from the Qatar military defence systems. So a lot of the shrapnel was falling in the vicinity of the residential area.
“We're not too far from the base itself, so it was quite, quite alarming, to be fair, but at least now, everybody's safe and sound, and we understand there's no casualties.”
Mickey said there had been a lot of apprehension in Qatar in recent weeks particularly with tensions rising between the US and Iran, but hoped that he situation would settle down and this attack would be an isolated incident.
