Sleep­less nights un­der the thun­der of in­ter­cept­ed mis­siles have be­come rou­tine for some Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als liv­ing in the Mid­dle East, as the con­flict in­volv­ing the Unit­ed States, Is­rael and Iran in­ten­si­fies with dead­ly con­se­quences.

In­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies re­port that hun­dreds of peo­ple have been killed since the lat­est es­ca­la­tion be­gan, in­clud­ing women and chil­dren caught in strikes on res­i­den­tial ar­eas and near mil­i­tary tar­gets. Hos­pi­tals in parts of the re­gion are said to be over­whelmed, with im­ages cir­cu­lat­ing of in­jured civil­ians and dam­aged neigh­bour­hoods. While the fight­ing has cen­tred on strate­gic in­stal­la­tions, civil­ian ca­su­al­ties have deep­ened glob­al con­cern and out­rage.

For T&T na­tion­al Fi­az Ma­hamood, a di­rec­tor at Kuwait Drilling, the war is be­ing mea­sured less in sta­tis­tics and more in sleep­less nights.