UK prepares flight from Israel for British nationals

13 hours ago Share Save Cachella Smith BBC News Share Save

Reuters First responders attended the site of a missile strike in Haifa, Israel on Sunday.

The UK government is organising a chartered flight next week for British nationals who want to leave Israel. Britons are being asked to register interest in the flight via online forms but have been told not to travel to the airport unless told to do so. Over the past week the government has been working with Israeli authorities on plans to arrange flights out of the country and Occupied Palestinian Territories. The latest announcement comes after the US launched strikes at nuclear facilities in Iran overnight amid an escalation in tensions between Israel and Iran. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has advised against all travel to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Israeli airspace was closed on 13 June after it launched its operation against Iran, prompting retaliatory strikes. The FCDO said further flights would be considered depending both on demand and the latest security situation. It added the volatility of the situation meant the ability to run flights “could change at short notice”. British nationals and non-British immediate family members travelling with them are eligible for a seat, but places on the flight from Tel Aviv will be allocated according to need. On X, the FCDO said the flight would be for “vulnerable British nationals and their dependents”. Passengers will need the necessary travel documents and visas.

A spokesperson said: “The safety of British Nationals in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories continues to be our utmost priority – that’s why the UK government is preparing flights to help those wanting to leave.” On June 15, the FCDO changed its travel advice to warn against all travel to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, having previously told Britons to avoid “all travel to parts of Israel”. This followed an escalation in military activity in the region after Israel launched attacks on Iranian military infrastructure and nuclear sites. The US said it launched strikes on three nuclear facilities in Iran on Saturday night. While the UK said it did not participate, government minister Jonathan Reynolds told the BBC they had been informed in advance about the plan.

Other countries have been organising their own evacuation plans for their citizens. India said on Thursday it planned to evacuate all Indian nationals who wished to leave, firstly by land and then air, while the US ambassador to Israel said on Saturday that America had begun assisted departure flights. The Chinese ambassador to Israel said in a media interview around 400 of China’s citizens had been evacuated as of Saturday, including students. The country has also been evacuating from Iran. Austria’s foreign ministry said in its latest statement around 120 people, including citizens of partner countries, have been evacuated from Iran and Israel.

Israel said it would temporarily reopen its airspace for six hours on Sunday in a bid to repatriate citizens who are stranded abroad under its ‘Operation Safe Return” scheme. It said Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv would be open for landings from 14:00 to 20:00 local time (10:00 BST to 18:00 BST).

Israel recovers bodies of three hostages from Gaza

17 hours ago Share Save Thomas Mackintosh BBC News Share Save

Reuters The bodies of Yonatan Samerano, Ofra Keidar and Sgt Shai Levinson were retrieved on Saturday, the IDF confirmed

The bodies of three Israeli hostages have been recovered from the Gaza Strip, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said. He confirmed that Yonatan Samrano, Ofra Kedar and Staff Sgt Shai Levinson’s remains were retrieved on Saturday in a military operation. “I thank our commanders and fighters for a successful operation, for their determination and courage,” Netanyahu said in a statement. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have recovered the bodies of eight hostages from Gaza so far this month.

“The campaign to return the abductees continues continuously and is taking place in parallel with the campaign against Iran,” Netanyahu said. “We will not rest until we return all of our abductees home – both the living and the dead.” The IDF said the bodies were recovered on Saturday, but did not say where in the Gaza Strip the remains were found. Ms Keidar was 71 when she was killed at a kibbutz and her body taken into Gaza. Staff Sgt Levinson “engaged and fought terrorists on the morning of 7 October and fell in combat,” the IDF said. He was 19 at the time of his death. Earlier on Sunday, Mr Samerano’s father announced that his son’s body had been recovered by the Israeli army. Posting on Instagram Kobi Samerano wrote: “Yesterday was Yonati’s Hebrew birthday. On his 23rd birthday, on the very day he was born, our Yonati was rescued in a heroic operation by the brave soldiers of the IDF and the Shin Bet.”

In a statement following the announcement, Israel’s Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents some of the hostages’ relatives, said: “Our hearts are with the Keidar, Samerano, and Levinson families today. “Alongside the grief and pain, their return provides some comfort to the families who have waited in agony, uncertainty, and doubt for 625 days. “Particularly against the backdrop of current military developments and the significant achievements in Iran, we want to emphasize that bringing back the remaining 50 hostages is the key to achieving complete Israeli victory. “There will be no victory until the last hostage returns.”

‘Paralysed and constantly caught by surprise’: Voices from Iran after US strikes

11 hours ago Share Save David Gritten BBC News Taraneh Fathalian BBC Persian Share Save

EPA Iranians attended a protest against the Israeli and US strikes in Tehran on Sunday

“My days and nights are the same. I feel paralysed. I just stare at the ceiling all day and all night.” “I keep wondering what will happen next, and we are constantly caught by surprise.” Shahla – whose name we have changed for her protection – is among the Iranians who have contacted BBC Persian to express their fear and anger after the US bombed three of their country’s key nuclear sites overnight. US President Donald Trump said the Isfahan, Natanz and Fordo facilities were “obliterated” and told Iran’s leaders that they now had a choice of “peace or tragedy”. But Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the US had crossed “a big red line” and warned that it would have “everlasting consequences”. The strikes happened just over a week after Israel launched a large-scale air campaign against Iran, saying it aimed to remove what it called the existential threats of the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. Iran’s health ministry says at least 430 people have been killed so far, although one human rights group has put the death toll at double that. Iran has responded by launching missiles at Israeli cities, killing 24 people, according to Israeli authorities.

Iran’s government has severely restricted access to the internet over the past week, limiting the flow of information about what is happening on the ground and making it harder for families to communicate. Mehri – also not her real name – was nevertheless able to send BBC Persian an audio message saying how the US strikes had left her upset and angry. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this level of sorrow and rage over anything in my life,” she said. “But in a way, it also gives me a strange sense of clarity – it reminds me that I’m connected to something beyond myself.” “This war – Iran’s war – is essentially a conflict between three individuals. Three leaders, from three countries, driven by their own ideologies,” she added, apparently referring to Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “I get furious when I hear them mention names like Isfahan or suddenly declare: ‘We’ve taken control of Iran’s skies.’ These are not just words to me – they’re sacred.” Homayoun, a man from the north-western region of Maku, was defiant in the face of Trump’s warning that Iran would face more attacks if it did not agree to peace. “Yes, we’re going through tough times – but we’ll stand by our country to the very end. And if needed, we’ll give our lives for our homeland, for our honour,” he said. “We won’t let America and its lackeys make any wrong moves in our country.” Trump warned Iran on Saturday that any retaliation against the US “will be met with force far greater than what was witnessed tonight”. But at a news conference in Turkey on Sunday, Araghchi declared that Iran reserved “all options to defend its security, interests and people”. He also said the US bore “full responsibility for the consequences of its actions”. The Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) described US bases in the Middle East as “vulnerabilities, not strengths”. Before Israel launched its air campaign, Iran’s defence minister had threatened to target all US bases “within our reach” if the US participated in any strikes on its nuclear programme. Some hardliners also called for US Navy vessels in the Gulf to be targeted and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important shipping routes.

EPA Iran’s government has restricted internet access, limiting the flow of information from the country

Decoy flights and seven B-2 stealth bombers – how US says it hit Iran’s nuclear sites

5 hours ago Share Save Jake Horton, Paul Sargeant and Robin Levinson King BBC Verify Reporting from Washington, DC Share Save

BBC

An 18-hour flight each way, multiple mid-air refuelings, and a series of decoys – this is how the mission to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities played out, according to four-star General Dan Caine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking officer in the US military. Although the full impact of what the US is calling ‘Operation Midnight Hammer’ is still unclear, a timeline of how the complex mission unfolded was laid out in a Pentagon briefing on Sunday morning, mere hours after the strikes. American bombers went “in and out and back without the world knowing at all”, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told reporters.

It all began just after midnight when Secretary Hegseth joined US President Donald Trump, Vice-President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and elite Pentagon staff in the Situation Room at the White House to watch as a fleet of aircraft departed an American airbase in rural Missouri. Under the cover of darkness, B-2 stealth bombers took off from Whiteman Air Force Base at 00:01 EDT (05:01 BST), according to the Pentagon. Their ultimate target: Iran’s most secure nuclear sites. The subsonic jets, which travel just below the speed of sound, flew over the Atlantic Ocean loaded with powerful “bunker buster” bombs capable of penetrating concrete over 18m (60ft) deep. It’s the kind of weaponry needed to hit Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility at Fordo, which is buried below a mountain deep underground and considered to be the epicentre of the country’s nuclear programme. The US is the only country in the world known to possess this type of weapon.

But the world wasn’t watching – yet. All eyes were facing west, towards the Pacific Ocean, following reports bombers had been sent to the US island territory of Guam. “While the deployment is not being officially connected to discussions around the US joining Israel’s war on Iran, few will doubt the link,” the BBC wrote at the time. But it was just a ruse – according to the account delivered by the Pentagon – a decoy to distract from the top-secret flights heading straight for Iran over the Atlantic.

The planes that flew west over the Pacific were “a deception effort known only to an extremely small number of planners and key leaders,” Gen Caine said. “The main strike package comprised of seven B-2 spirit bombers, each with two crew members, proceeded quietly to the east with minimal communications,” he added. Those military planes don’t show up on flight tracking websites, making it difficult for the BBC to independently verify the Pentagon’s description of the events. And although satellite images can help show the extent of damage at the sites overnight, they can’t tell us the exact times when they were hit. When the fleet made it to the Middle East, sometime around 17:00 EDT (22:00 BST), it was joined by support aircraft that helped protect the bombers by sweeping in front of them to look for enemy fighters and surface-to-air missile threats, in what Gen Caine called a “complex, tightly timed manoeuvre”. But Iranian fighter jets didn’t take off and no air defences appeared to fire a shot, according to US officials. “Israeli dominance over Iranian airspace primed the pump for American bombers to operate with impunity,” Patrycja Bazylczyk, a missile defence expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC, told BBC Verify. The next hour and forty minutes were described by Gen Caine during the Pentagon briefing in a level of detail not normally disclosed to the public. Although the briefing provided timings for certain events, the map showing the bombers’ journey wasn’t a specific flight path and differed slightly in two versions presented. The Trump administration has proclaimed the subsequent events as a total victory, claiming the US had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear regime. But the true extent of the damage, and its aftermath, has yet to be measured. While Iran has confirmed the attacks, it has minimised the extent of the damage and has not provided a specific account of the sequence of events. At around 17:00 EDT (22:00 BST) US officials say more than two dozen Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles were launched from a US submarine stationed in the Arabian Sea towards the nuclear site near Isfahan, a city of about two million people. While the nuclear facility there is hundreds of kilometres inland, the submarines were close enough to enable the cruise missiles to impact at roughly the same time as the stealthy B-2s dropped their “bunker buster” bombs over the other two nuclear sites, said Dr Stacie Pettyjohn, a defence expert at the Center for a New American Security. It all meant that the US was able to provide “a coordinated surprise attack on multiple sites”, she told BBC Verify. Meanwhile, the fleet of bombers entered Iranian airspace, where the US employed several other deception tactics, including more decoys, according to the Pentagon. Then the air strikes began. The lead bomber dropped two GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator weapons – known as MOPs – on the first of several targets at Fordo at about 18:40 EDT (23:40 BST), just after 02:00 in the morning in Iran. The MOP bomb is able to drop through about 18m (60ft) of concrete or 61m (200ft) of earth before exploding, according to experts. This means that although it’s not guaranteed success, it is the only bomb in the world that could come close to impacting the depth of tunnels at the Fordo facility – thought to be 80-90m (262-295ft) below the surface. It was the first time the “bunker buster” bombs were ever dropped in a real combat operation.

Chris Mason: UK’s position on Iran is clear but will the US listen?

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office in February

The prime minister has spoken to President Trump in the aftermath of America’s attacks on Iran.

But, in the end, the call beforehand demanding a yes or no answer didn’t come.

That is not to say it might not in the days and weeks to come.

The British government is making it known that while it was told in advance what Washington was about to do, it didn’t take part and wasn’t asked to.

And so there wasn’t a call from President Trump asking the prime minister whether the UK would be involved, for instance via authorising US warplanes to use the UK military base at on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

Having repeatedly pressed publicly for “de-escalation” as Sir Keir Starmer puts it, and questions seemingly being raised privately within government about the legality of getting involved, saying yes to a request for help from the White House might have been difficult.

But saying no would have been difficult too, after months of assiduous effort put into developing a good relationship with President Trump.

Washington acting alone and choosing to send its planes direct from America meant that massive, binary decision from Sir Keir wasn’t needed.

But, depending if, how and when Iran chooses to retaliate, some of these trade-offs could soon return.