(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has released updated travel guidance for 31 countries following escalating tensions in the Middle East.
Israeli and American military action against Iran over recent weeks has prompted retaliation that has grounded thousands of flights, resulted in more than 2,000 deaths and forced the closure of flight paths and shipping routes.
The FCDO has published multiple warnings and guidance for British nationals intending to visit, or currently located in, impacted nations. The most recent update was released earlier this afternoon, covering 31 countries.
"Escalation in the Middle East has caused widespread travel disruption, including airspace closures, delayed and cancelled flights. Your travel plans may be affected, even if your destination is not in the Middle East," the guidance states. The FCDO recommends that before departing, UK passport holders:, reports the Mirror.
(Image: ROYAL THAI NAVY/AFP via Getty Images)
More than 1,300 individuals in Iran have lost their lives during the conflict. Israeli operations targeting the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant organisation in Lebanon have forced over 1 million people from their homes – approximately 20% of the population – according to Lebanese authorities, who report more than 1,000 fatalities. Israel claims to have eliminated over 500 Hezbollah fighters.
In Israel, 15 individuals have died from Iranian missile attacks. Four people were also killed overnight in the occupied West Bank by an Iranian missile strike, officials confirmed. At least 13 U.S. military personnel have been killed. Iran announced the execution of three men detained in January's nationwide protests, the first such sentences known to have been carried out, the judiciary's Mizan news agency reported.
Today, three weeks since the war began, Iran intensified its attacks on oil and natural gas facilities around the Gulf.
The strikes, in retaliation for an Israeli attack on a key Iranian gas field, sent fuel prices soaring and risked drawing Iran's Arab neighbours directly into the conflict. Tehran's targeting of energy production further strained global supplies already under pressure because of Iran's stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which a fifth of the world's oil is transported.
Since the U.S. and Israel launched the war on 28 February, Iran's top leaders have been killed in airstrikes and the country's military capabilities have been severely degraded. Still, Iran – now led by the son of the supreme leader killed in the war's opening salvo – remains capable of missile and drone attacks rattling its Gulf Arab neighbours and a global economy dependent on the energy they produce.
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