A British military base on Cyprus was struck by an unmanned Iranian drone on Monday amid the US-Israeli war with Iran, with authorities issuing precautionary evacuation orders for the surrounding area.
The area around the Mediterranean island base on the southern coast was evacuated, the Cypriot interior ministry said. Paphos airport in western Cyprus was also evacuated but later got the all-clear and was operating as normal, an airport official said.
The precautionary evacuations came after two drones headed towards the Akrotiri base were also intercepted earlier on Monday.
More than 60 flights had been cancelled at Larnaca and Paphos airports, the official added. Larnaca, on the southeastern coast, was also now operating as usual.
Families of air force personnel there were evacuated, the UK ministry of defence told AFP, although the base continued to operate as normal.
The damage had been "minimal" and there were no casualties, officials said.
The UK's Middle East minister, Hamish Falconer, insisted the nation was "not at war".
"Let me be really clear: the UK took a deliberate decision not to be part of the first wave of strikes conducted by the United States and Israeli governments," he said.
"But in the face of reckless attacks from Iran ... we took the decision, as the prime minister announced last night, to support the US's request to use our bases in order to conduct defensive actions."
Lessons learned from Iraq
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced late on Sunday that he had agreed to a US request to use British military bases for "specific and limited defensive purpose" having previously taken a "deliberate" decision not to be involved.
He said that the mistakes of the Iraq war had been "learned".
The initial decision not to back the United States attracted the ire of US President Donald Trump, who said he had been "very disappointed" in Starmer's decision.
Trump, in an exclusive interview with The Daily Telegraph, described the prime minister's later decision to allow the use of bases on specific grounds as "useful" but said it "took far too much time".
"President Trump has expressed his disagreement with our decision not to get involved in the initial strikes," Starmer said after Trump criticised him.
"But it is my duty to judge what is in Britain's national interest. That is what I've done, and I stand by it."
'Reckless'
Starmer said on Monday that the killing of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had led Iran to strike regional military and economic targets in a "reckless" manner.
The death of Khamenei "will not stop Iran from launching these strikes", Starmer told parliament. "In fact, their approach is becoming even more reckless and more dangerous to civilians."
Any potential military action in the Middle East is politically sensitive in the UK following former prime minister Tony Blair's disastrous support for the US-led invasion of Iraq.
Evie Aspinall, director of the British Foreign Policy Group think-tank, said that the UK would not want to be "seen as a key party in this conflict".
"Hence allowing defensive not offensive strikes, although the difference between the two is, in practice, often very minimal," she said.
Greece said it was sending two frigates and two F-16 fighter jets to Cyprus. Athens would assist Cyprus in "countering threats and illegal actions on its territory", the defence ministry said.
Defence Minister Nikos Dendias also said he would travel to Cyprus on Tuesday.
Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides said the incident just after midnight (2200 GMT) involved "a Shahed unmanned aerial vehicle".
Britain's Foreign Minister Yvette Cooper said the UK government was "working on every possible option" to help its nationals in the region return home if needed.
"There's an estimated 300,000 British citizens in Gulf countries that have now been targeted by Iran, including countries where now airspace is closed," she told Sky News.
More than 100,000 UK nationals had so far registered their presence in the region, Cooper said.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
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