Iranians fleeing cities under attack seek refuge in the countryside

Tens of thousands of Iranians are fleeing Tehran and other cities as Israeli and U.S. bombardment spreads fear

BEIRUT -- Terrified by explosions shaking their homes in Tehran and other cities, tens of thousands of Iranians have packed up and left, finding refuge in small, remote towns to wait out massive bombardment by Israel and the United States.

Pouya Akhgari, 22, is holed up in a family house with aunts and cousins in a village 200 kilometers (120 miles) from his home in the capital, Tehran. As snow falls in the mountainous countryside of Zanjan province, he mostly spends his days watching movies and TV shows and sometimes ventures out to the nearest main town.

The village has been spared strikes, but Akhgari's friends in Tehran tell him about the blasts all around them.

“It just feels so chaotic. I thought it’d be very short but it’s dragging on,” he told The Associated Press by a messaging app. ”If it goes on like this, we’ll run out of money."

The U.N. refugee agency said that in the first two days of the war, about 100,000 people fled Tehran, a city of around 9.7 million. It said that the scale of displacement is likely much higher, though it didn't have figures for the days since, or on the flight from other cities.