Scottish teacher in Dubai says she heard 'loud bangs' during Iranian missile attack

Felicity Flanagan, who has been living in the United Arab Emirates since August, was at the beach with her friends as the time of the explosions.

She told BBC Radio Scotland’s Breakfast programme: “My experience first started on Saturday, around about midday.

“My friends and I were having a really nice time down at the beach on the Palm when we heard two or three loud bangs.

“When that went off we had no idea what it was, so there was obviously uncertainty in the air and we didn’t know what to do.

“Moments later, we actually saw what we believed to be shrapnel from the missile then fall into the water in front of us.”

She said she had followed advice from the British embassy and stayed at home since.

Ms Flanagan said: “We got a text message from the (UAE) government with a loud siren through our phones, warning us to stay sheltered but also to stay away from windows.”

She then sheltered in the bathroom with her boyfriend and one of his work colleagues.

The attacks on the Gulf region, which included strikes in Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain, came after US and Israeli forces attacked Iran on Saturday morning.

‘Mass evacuation’ of Britons in the Gulf

On Monday Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said the UK was working on “every possible option” to protect Britons trapped in the Gulf, including a mass evacuation.

She told Sky News there were around 300,000 British citizens in Gulf countries targeted by Iran.

She said: “We are setting up the support systems because as well as the 94,000 people who have been in touch when we set up the ‘register your presence’ system, 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 as a result of those attacks.

“That is, of course, extremely stressful for people who include holidaymakers and transit passengers at airports, people who have gone there for business trips, as well as those who live in the region as well.

“So we’re saying to people, the most important thing at the moment is to follow the local advice, which in most places is around sheltering in place, and we are sending out rapid deployment teams to the region to work with the travel industry, to work with local governments as well, to make sure that citizens can get support.

“Of course, we want people to get safely home as swiftly as possible.”

Asked if evacuation plans were being drawn up she said: “We are working on every possible option.”

Later, she told Times Radio it was “not in the UK’s interests” to support the US attack on Iran over the weekend.

She said: “I think our guiding issue has been about UK interests and about what we think is the right way forward.

“And our assessment was that it was not in the UK’s interests to provide support for the action that took place over the weekend.

“But it is in UK interests and it is the right thing to do – given how many British citizens that we have in the region – to support this defensive action now.”

She said one would mourn the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei but added the UK was not involved with what had happened.

Asked on LBC if the Government supports the end result, Ms Cooper said: “I don’t think anyone would mourn what has happened, because this is obviously part of a regime that has been not only brutally pursuing its own citizens, but also supporting terrorist activity across the region, destabilising activity through proxies across the region.

“But it is not something that we were involved in.”

RAF site hit by drone

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has confirmed a suspected drone strike hit RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus in the early hours of Monday.

There were no casualties in the incident at the base near Limassol but the Sovereign Base Areas Administration said “a temporary dispersal” was being planned for non-essential personnel.

The suspected strike came hours after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the UK had allowed the US to strike Iranian missile sites from British bases.

Middle East minister Hamish Falconer told BBC Radio Scotland an “unmanned drone” had hit the runway at RAF Akrotiri and inflicted “relatively limited damage”.

But asked if the UK was now at war, he said: “The UK is 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.

“But in the face of reckless attacks from Iran on a whole range of allies in the region – those are Gulf allies in which there are many, many UK nationals, probably 300,000 – and in response to requests from those Gulf allies… 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.

“There are ballistic missile launches in Iran, pointed at the Gulf and it is vital that those missile launches are taken out in the face of these completely reckless attacks.”