'Very difficult to stop': BBC visits scene of Iran cluster bomb strike on Israel

The path of the bomb was still clearly mapped onto the ash-covered debris left behind. A large hole in the ceiling of their top-floor apartment marked where it punched through, forcing broken concrete and metal rods inwards.

Shrapnel holes across the back walls showed the force of the explosion, which destroyed the front of the apartment - leaving it open to the street outside.

Inside, a walking frame lay upended on the floor under the ash-covered furniture and rubble.

"We heard three noisy interceptions, but on the fourth one, we knew it was our house," said Sigal Amir, who lives next door and was sheltering in her safe room when the explosion hit.

"There was a massive boom and I felt a pain in my ear from the blast," she said. "The neighbours live five metres from us – their door was blown off and their house was full of dust like snow."

She said the couple had not been in the shelter when the bomb hit as one of them had mobility issues.

As the war has gone on, Iran has shifted to using more of them.

"You can see the entry point of the rocket that flew all the way from Iran in a huge missile, and broke into dozens of pieces," said Israeli military spokesman Lt Col Nadav Shoshani during a visit to the site. "We had dozens of impact points like this in central Israel."

He said that while Israel had intercepted the missiles carrying cluster bombs, each carried 20 to 80 munitions, which were "very difficult to stop".

While we were there, another alarm sounded, warning of incoming missiles. The neighbour, Sigal, beckoned us into her safe room.

There have been relatively few casualties from Iranian missiles in Israel. Fourteen people have so far been killed directly by strikes, nine of them in one attack in Bet Shemesh in the early days of the war.

The joint US-Israel campaign against Iran, now in its 19th day, has destroyed military sites, oil facilities and other infrastructure across the country, with the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (Hrana) reporting on Tuesday that at least 1354 civilians and 1138 military personnel have been killed since the war began.

Israel's military says it has destroyed more than 70% of Iran's ballistic missile launchers, and that Iran's attacks against Israel are now weakening.

Meanwhile, Israel's population is resilient, and support for the war still appears to be strong.

But the regular alarms, which send Israelis into shelters night and day, and the increasing use of cluster munitions, has left some in this war-weary population starting to ask when and how it will end.

"To be honest, in the last days I'm losing hope a little bit," said Sigal as we sheltered in the safe room. "I feel there's no end to it, there's no direction, we can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. We must endure this, but I'm not sure how long it will take, [or] where we are going from here."

This war was framed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the culmination of a long battle against Israel's enemies in the region.

He has basked in his country's military superiority, saying the current conflict has already changed the Middle East, and that Israel is now a regional power and, in some respects, a global one.

But this is an asymmetric war, and Iran is pressing on US sensitives around oil prices, casualties and the vulnerability of its Gulf allies, to force an end to hostilities.

Israel's potential timeline for this conflict is thought to be longer than Washington's. It is also fighting on a second front, against the Lebanese group Hezbollah - a well-armed Iranian proxy on Israel's northern border - which joined the war after the assassination of Iran's former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei.

Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have been displaced, and 912 killed in Israeli operations, according to Lebanon's health ministry.

This week, Israeli ground forces expanded operations in southern Lebanon, after ordering vast areas of the country to evacuate.

But the US is already reported to be exploring a deal with the Lebanese government to calm the situation.

Netanyahu sees this moment as a golden opportunity to strike real blows against Iran's regional network, fighting "shoulder to shoulder" with the US.

He's promised the war will deliver lasting change. But the pressures on his superpower ally are growing, and each fatal missile strike makes it harder to declare victory at home.

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