Kombos calls British, Egyptian ministers amid Middle East conflict

Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos on Saturday held telephone calls with his Egyptian counterpart Badr Abdelatty and the United Kingdom’s minister of state for Europe Stephen Doughty, as the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran, and Iran retaliated with strikes on US military infrastructure in the region.

According to the foreign ministry, Kombos and Doughty had “focused on … the need for regional stability and security”.

While the UK’s government has updated its travel advisory for many countries in the region since Friday, its advisory for Cyprus has remained unchanged since January, when it warned that there is a “heightened risk of regional tension”.

“Escalation could lead to travel disruption and other unanticipated impacts,” it said, with this somewhat coming to pass with the cancellation of many eastward flights out of Cyprus.

It added that British nationals in Cyprus “should take sensible precautions, considering their own individual circumstances”.

On Saturday, the BBC reported that the UK “did not participate” in Saturday morning’s strikes, though the country did bolster its presence at its Akrotiri air force base in Cyprus in light of the strikes, with two Royal Air Force Airbus A400M military transport aircraft arriving in Akrotiri from the Brize Norton airbase in Oxfordshire, on the UK mainland.