The 310 pilgrims from Lagos who traveled to Israel on Tuesday returned to Nigeria with some compelling stories of how they narrowly avoided being killed in the current Israel-Hamas conflict.
Mrs. Adebimpe Bada, a lawyer, claimed in an exclusive interview with Newsmen on Tuesday that although they were in Israel when the fighting began, they learned about attacks on some of the places they had visited after they had left those locations.
“We heard, I didn’t see, we heard that a particular hotel that we just departed from was attacked about two hours after we left there.
“We visited several places; we were in Bethlehem, we were in Jordan, we were in Nazareth, so, what we learnt was that the last place we left, just barely two or three hours after we left, was attacked.
“The locations we visited that were later attacked were attacked after we had departed from there,” thankful Bada told our correspondent.
The lawyer stated that the staff of the Lagos State Christian Pilgrims Welfare Board, under the direction of its Executive Secretary, Mrs. Florence Gbafe, “managed the situation properly so that we didn’t know what was going on at the time.”
In addition, according to Bada, the pilgrims saw conflict among Israelis and “blood donation centers that were already established.”
Another traveler, Mr. Emmanuel Bantale, claimed that because of the time they spent in Israel, he had a premonition that there may be attacks.
“As a news person, I have keenly followed the tension between Israel and Hamas for a long time now. I have observed that the Palestinians would always want to attack whenever there is a significant feast in Israel.
“We went to Israel during the Feast of Tabernacles, and this got me scared. I told my partner that I was scared and that anything could happen, and we were already in Israel at the time,” Bantale said.
He added that they were onboard a bus enroute to the Sea of Galilee “when I sighted a parachute at a long distance from us and I called the attention of others to it. I never knew that was the time the Palestinians wanted to hit Israel.
“It was when we got back to our hotel, and I got to realise that the attacks were carried out by men using parachutes.”
On Tuesday, the 310 Lagos contingent arrived back in Nigeria at the 12.50 am Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Ikeja, Lagos.
The Economic Times reports that as the Israel-Hamas conflict enters its fourth day, the dead toll is approaching 1,900 as Hamas targets the Israeli city of Ashkelon after advising inhabitants to escape.
