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For the last seven years, Rakib Sikdar has been working as a security guard in a residential building in Dubai.

The 37-year-old shares a room with six other Indian workers in a building in the busy commercial neighbourhood of Dubai Silicon Oasis.

On the evening of February 28, Sikdar had broken his Ramzan fast and was about to call his family back home in India, when his roommates asked him to step out.

“We ran outside and saw what seemed like a drone fall down,” Sikdar told Scroll from Dubai. “I recorded it on my phone.”

A few hours later, Sikdar said his friend, who lives near the Jebel Ali Port in Dubai, shot a video of similar projectiles at the port, which is also an American naval base.

Indian workers and professionals living in the region were on edge as Iran carried out air strikes in cities of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and other Gulf states on Saturday and Sunday.

“Nobody could sleep last night,” Sikdar said. “Whenever we heard the sound of an explosion, people rushed out to the balcony.”

The attacks were in response to the United States and Israel’s attack on the country, which killed Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

Over 9 million Indians live and work in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

The Dubai International...

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