Non-essential personnel to leave UK airbase in Cyprus after drone strike

Non-essential personnel will leave the UK’s RAF Akrotiri base in Cyprus after it was hit by a drone strike, causing limited damage and no casualties, Cypriot authorities and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.A security alert put out to residents in the vicinity of Akrotiri by the British base’s administration advised residents to shelter in place until further notice “following a suspected drone impact”.An MoD spokesperson said: “Our armed forces are responding to a suspected drone strike at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus at midnight local time. Our force protection in the region is at the highest level and the base has responded to defend our people.”A statement later from the Sovereign Bases Administration said the authorities “have planned the temporary dispersal of non-essential personnel as a precautionary measure after an incident with an unmanned drone overnight”.It said: “We understand in the wider British bases community that people are concerned and that some residents have decided to leave Akrotiri village.“While we appreciate people may be worried, we do not believe this is necessary and temporary dispersal only applies to RAF Akrotiri station.”It said other facilities on the island would operate “as normal”.On Monday morning, the president of Cyprus, Nikos Christodoulides, said the Akrotiri base was hit overnight by an unmanned Shahed drone which caused minor material damage.“I want to be clear: our country does not participate in any way and does not intend to be part of any military operation,” Christodoulides said in a statement.The apparent attack took place hours after the UK agreed to let the US use British military bases to attack Iranian missile sites.The UK has so far not been involved in the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, but in a recorded statement on Sunday evening, the prime minister said that Iran’s approach was becoming more reckless and putting British lives at risk, leading to the decision to allow the US to use two of its military bases.Britain retains sovereignty over the territory of two bases on Cyprus, which is a member of the EU. RAF Akrotiri covers a sprawling, square-shaped peninsula on the southern tip of the eastern Mediterranean island. The last time it was directly attacked was by Libyan militants in the mid-1980s.According to the MoD’s website, the joint operating base is “used as a forward mounting base for overseas operations in the Middle East and for fast jet training”.It is understood the UK government recently moved additional resources to bases in Cyprus as part of its operations in the Middle East.Hostilities in the Middle East entered their third day on Monday, with the US and Israel continuing to strike Iran after the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in an airstrike.In his announcement on Sunday, Starmer said that 200,000 British nationals, including military personnel, were thought to be at risk in the Gulf as Iran launched further missiles at its neighbours.Starmer said British forces would not be directly involved in the strikes, and the bases would only be used for the “specific and limited defensive purpose” of targeting missile storage depots and launchers being used to attack Iran’s neighbours.It was not clear which bases would be used, but the US president, Donald Trump, had previously referred to asking to use Diego Garcia, one of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean.Reuters and the Press Association contributed to this report