9/5/2024–|Last updated: 5/9/202408:28 PM (Mecca time)
The British website “Declassified”, which specializes in British politics and intelligence, said that since December 3, the British army has carried out 200 aerial spy missions over the Gaza Strip in support of Israel.
According to the website, the British government refused to provide him with any details about the army’s air sorties over Gaza, but he was able to independently build a timeline for these missions.
He said that the exceptional number of missions over the past five months was taking place at a rate of one air sortie per day, and it continued even as Israel invaded the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, which was supposedly “safe.”
According to the website, last March witnessed the largest number of spy flights over Gaza, with an average of 44 missions.
He explained that the spy planes were launched from the British air base “Raf Akrotiri” of the Royal Air Force, located in Cyprus, and each sortie lasted about 6 hours.
The site estimates that British Royal Air Force planes collected about a thousand hours of footage over Gaza.
Assassination of aid workers
The website says that a British spy plane was flying in the air on Monday, April 1, when 3 British aid workers were killed in Gaza in an Israeli raid targeting the World Central Kitchen team.
He also pointed out that the British “Shadow R1” spy plane landed in Beersheba on February 13 and remained there for two hours before flying back to the British base in Cyprus.
He added that the purpose of the plane’s visit is not clear, but Beersheba, a city in the Negev desert, is home to the Israeli “Nevatim” air base, and this base was central for the United States to supply Israel with bombs and other weapons that it used in its attacks on the Gaza Strip.
International Criminal Court
The site adds that the British Ministry of Defense announced on December 2 that “the spy planes will not be armed, will not play a combat role, and will be used exclusively for the purposes of locating hostages.” Shortly after this announcement, 5 different MPs asked the British Defense Minister, Grant Shapps, what He would have shared the photos taken by reconnaissance planes with the International Criminal Court if they showed evidence of war crimes, but every time he gave an evasive answer.
The site says that when another representative asked the same question again last week, the Ministry of Defense appeared to deny sharing any photos with the court. It also refused to comment on whether spy planes had photographed the mass graves made by Israel in the Nasser and Shifa hospitals in Gaza, and continued to confirm that “Unarmed British reconnaissance aircraft are used solely for the purpose of locating the remaining hostages.”
But the website believes that the exceptional number of reconnaissance flights, and the fact that they began nearly two months after the prisoners were taken, raises suspicions that the United Kingdom is not collecting intelligence materials aimed exclusively at determining the location of the hostages.
It is also unclear – according to the site – what the British “Shadow R1” aircraft can add to the prisoner rescue mission given the extensive surveillance capabilities that Israel enjoys on the ground in Gaza, according to the British site.