The Shadow R1. (The Royal Air Force)
The United Kingdom will carry out unarmed surveillance flights over the Middle East to help Israel locate hostages held by the Hamas Movement in the Gaza Strip, the Ministry of Defence says.
Five British nationals are still missing since the October 7 attack on Israel and the UK government has not said how many could be held by Hamas.
“The safety of British nationals is our utmost priority,” the MoD said. “In support of the ongoing hostage rescue activity, the Ministry of Defence will conduct surveillance flights over the eastern Mediterranean, including operating in air space over Israel and Gaza.”
The ministry added that the surveillance aircraft will be unarmed and will be tasked solely to locate hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
“Only information relating to hostage rescue will be passed to the relevant authorities responsible for hostage rescue,” the ministry said.
The aircraft will include Shadow R1s, a modified Beechcraft aircraft that the Royal Air Force uses for intelligence gathering, ministry officials said.
Last month, the Pentagon said that unarmed MQ-9 combat drones had been deployed over Gaza in “support of hostage recovery efforts”. The UK has been following the footsteps of the United States by providing Israel with unconditional support since the war in Gaza first broke out.
Fighting resumed in Gaza on December 1 after a week-long truce between Israel and Hamas, during which 80 Israeli hostages were released in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners. There are still thought to be more than 130 hostages in the Strip.
they must have pretty sophisticated info gathering technology to spot hostages possibly in hundreds of km of underground tunnels as much as 60 to 80 feet deep. or maybe they want to find hostages so they can be found and bombed then say they were murdered by hamas.
i hope these planes will be shot down by arabs, the pilots if they survive should be thrown alive into the fire and to set an example to others this should be widely publicised – to rub the noses of these british mends !
they are complicit in zionist genocide.
blast the anglo-zionist enemies of humanity out the sky and wherever found. fry filth and die with jew dicks in every orifice.
the gov’t of blighty are in a hurry to find these people before the isreali apartheid regime kills them with a tank shell or a bomb. the regime isn’t fussy. palestinian’s, american’s, british, even isreali’s, all seem to be fair game to the regime which only cares about the regime, its pr, and its greater isreal plans.
not going well for the indiscriminate destruction farce, even with their sophisticated satellite imagery, that of the us, they still needed help from the brits, who never turn down the chance to oppress a third world nation. can’t wait to hear about blowback in london
ha ha ha the pirate rockers are run by colonial riff raff, overrun by colonial riff raff stabbing the snaggle-toothed natives day in day out and yet the in-bred pedovore gubermint clowns spend resources they don’t have to “protect” the baby murdering, welfare warfare abomination in khazar occupied palestine. talk about hubris bloated morons and delusions of grandeur…britt land rues the day…etc…etc…etc.