Israel’s air defence system has not faced attack of this magnitude before

We’ve been looking out from the balcony here across the Jerusalem skyline. And we’ve seen a succession of air defence interceptors going up from various points around the city to meet targets in the sky.

And now the police seem to be going around on the streets in their cars with an announcement going out which is telling people to go to their nearest air raid shelters as quickly as they can.

The military has been telling people that the air defence systems that Israel has – that’s the Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow 2 and 3 – are very capable systems designed to deal with multiple types of threats.

It’s a layered air defence system to deal with rockets, to deal with ballistic and cruise missiles and to deal with drones as well.

And that is what we’re likely to be seeing over the next few minutes and hours as these different waves of projectiles come in.

The big test of course, for this layered air defence system is, [can it] cope with an assault of this magnitude, because this is not something that Israel has faced before, on this scale.