An Australian woman living in Israel has talked about the grim reality of life in the country amid its escalating conflict with Iran and tit-for-tat airstrikes.

The Israeli military launched attacks on Friday, with the aim of wiping out Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Iran vowed to “open the gates of hell” in retaliation, while Israel has also hit critical oil refineries.

Know the news with the 7NEWS app: Download today

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said 350 Australians have registered for help getting out of Iran, while another 300 Aussies had asked for aid in Israel.

Emily Gian, who lives in Yehud, has been caught in the crosshairs of the conflict.

“The last few days have been incredibly intense,” Gian told Sunrise on Tuesday.

“It feels more intense than the whole nearly two years of the war that’s been going on. It’s actually really hard to put in words, because it’s not something we’ve ever experienced before.”

Gian moved to Israel just months before the Hamas terror attack on the country on October 7, 2023 killed more than 1,200 innocent Israelis and sparked a war on Gaza.

“We arrived here ... in July of 2023. So, a few months before October 7,” Gian said.

“The (October 7 attack) obviously really caught the whole country off-guard, but also particularly people that have never lived through any sort of rocket attacks or anything before.

“That whole day was obviously so intense, and the weeks that followed after that. But these ballistic missile attacks from the Islamic republic of Iran have just been on a whole new level.

“It’s been hundreds of missiles at a time. We have to go into the shelter. The protocol for the earlier rockets that were coming from Hamas was to go into a shelter for 10 minutes, then you could come out.

“But here it’s going into the shelter and stay there until you get told you can come out.”

Gian, a mother-of-three, admitted she was having difficulty explaining it to her children.

“I think from just the experience of the last two years, it’s become easier to explain to them,” she said.

“It sounds awful, they’re not desensitised to it but they’re kind of used to it.

“They know what to do. They’ve done it before. It’s like a fire drill, the more times that you practise it, the easier it is to be able to do it.

“We have the siren right next to our house, the actual speaker. So, it’s very, very loud and when it wakes you in the middle of the night, it can really get them into a panic.

“But they sort of know everybody walks down, you have to go straight down. We’ve got basically two flights of stairs to get to our shelter and they’re all pretty good at it now.

“So, it’s been OK.”

Assisted departures

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has spoken about how the Australian government is assisting citizens.

“We are currently in the process of planning for assisted departures in the event that it is safe to do so,” Wong said on Monday.

“The timeline is primarily dictated by safety and as long as governments have closed down airspace because of the risk to civilian aircraft, obviously no one can fly — and we certainly can’t fly.”

Wong said the government was considering all options, including the use of Australian Defence Force or private charter planes.

Among those trapped in Israel are a delegation hosted by the Australian/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council that includes Olympian and former senator Nova Peris.

The military strikes were also discussed between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Canadian counterpart Mark Carney ahead of the G7 summit in Canada.

Albanese has called for a de-escalation of the conflict amid fears it could spread into a wider war.

“Both of us share a view wanting to see a de-escalation of conflict, wanting to prioritise dialogue and diplomacy,” Albanese said in Calgary.

“I have expressed before our concern about Iran gaining the capacity of nuclear weapons as something that is a threat to security in the region.

“But we, along with other like-minded countries, do want to see that priority on dialogue and diplomacy.”

Death toll climbs

Iran’s health ministry reported hundreds of people had been killed in the attacks since Friday, including many civilians.

More than a dozen Israelis have been reported killed in retaliatory strikes.

Defence Minister Richard Marles said the conflict would have a number of knock-on effects for the economy, including increasing petrol prices.

“We saw this with the war in Ukraine, that does disrupt global supply chains and that has an economic impact around the world,” Marles said.

Experts have warned Iran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz — the only maritime entry point into the Persian Gulf — would also send oil prices soaring.

Marles added Australian diplomatic staff in Iran and Israel had all been accounted for, as had military personnel in the region.

He reiterated safety warnings to Australians in the Middle East, with the situation remaining volatile.

— With AAP