Israel’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday evacuated non-essential embassy personnel from the United Arab Emirates, Jerusalem confirmed.
“In light of concrete threats against Israeli missions in the UAE, and at the request of security authorities, non-essential staff were evacuated from the United Arab Emirates,” the MFA said in a statement to Ynet.
“In both Abu Dhabi and Dubai, diplomatic teams remain in place to ensure the continued and uninterrupted handling of diplomatic and consular affairs,” the ministry’s statement added.
According to the Ynet report, some 80 embassy staffers were flown to Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport on a UAE military aircraft.
The flight received permission to land in Tel Aviv despite the ongoing closure of the Jewish state’s airspace due to ongoing Iranian attacks.
The report cited unnamed Israeli officials as saying that the decision to carry out the covert rescue mission was made following indications of two concrete Iranian attempts to target Israeli diplomats in the UAE.
“Security officials instructed that part of the non-essential staff be evacuated immediately, while essential teams remained in order to prepare the evacuation operation for Israelis,” the official explained.
As part of the war with the United States and Israel, the Islamic Republic has also carried out missile and drone assaults against several Gulf states, including the Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait.
Since the start of the conflict with Tehran, the UAE’s air defenses have intercepted more than 170 missiles and 800 unmanned aerial vehicles, Abu Dhabi’s Ministry of Defense announced on Tuesday evening.
On March 1, debris from a downed Iranian drone hit the Etihad Towers complex in Abu Dhabi, which houses the Israeli Embassy and several other diplomatic missions, injuring a woman and her child.
