Non-essential personnel to leave UK airbase in Cyprus after suspected drone strike | Cyprus
Non-essential personnel will leave after the UK’s RAF Akrotiri base in Cyprus was hit by a suspected drone strike, causing limited damage and no casualties, Cypriot officials and the Ministry of Defense (MoD) said.
A safety alert sent by the management of the British base to those living around Akrotiri advised residents to stay put until further notice “following a suspected drone strike”.
A Ministry of Defense spokesman said: “Our armed forces are responding to a suspected drone attack at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus at midnight local time. Our force protection in the area is top notch and the base responded to defend our people.”
A later statement said officials at the base were “planning to temporarily disband non-essential personnel as a precautionary measure following an incident with an unmanned drone overnight.”
The attack apparently took place just hours after the UK agreed to allow the US to use British military bases to attack Iran’s missile sites.
Britain has so far not been involved in US-Israeli attacks on Iran, but in a statement recorded on Sunday evening the prime minister said Iran’s approach was becoming more reckless and putting British lives at risk, which led to the decision to allow the US to use two military bases.
Earlier on Monday, a Cypriot government spokesman said “information received through various channels indicates that an unmanned drone was involved in the incident, which caused limited damage.”
Britain maintains its sovereignty over the territory of two bases in EU member Cyprus. RAF Akrotiri covers a sprawling, square-shaped peninsula at the southern tip of the eastern Mediterranean island. It was last attacked directly by Libyan militants in the mid-1980s.
According to the Department of Defense website, the joint operations base “is used as a forward assembly base for overseas operations in the Middle East and fast jet training.”
It is understood that the British government has recently transferred additional resources to bases in Cyprus within the scope of its operations in the Middle East.
Conflicts in the Middle East entered their third day on Monday; The United States and Israel continued to attack Iran after religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in an airstrike.
In his announcement on Sunday, Starmer said 200,000 British citizens, including military personnel, were thought to be at risk in the Gulf as Iran launched more missiles at its neighbours.
Starmer said British forces would not be directly involved in the attacks and that the bases would only be used for “specific and limited defensive purposes”, such as targeting missile depots and launchers used to attack Iran’s neighbours.
It was not clear which bases would be used, but US President Donald Trump had previously requested the use of Diego Garcia, one of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean.
Reuters and the Press Association contributed to this report
