At least five men were arrested on Sunday morning on suspicion of the \u201cpreparation of a terrorist act\u201d near a British Royal Air Force (RAF) base in southern England.<\/p>\n
Armed officers arrested the group of men after calls from residents to emergency services reported three \u201csuspicious vehicles which appeared to be travelling towards the air base\u201d, London\u2019s Metropolitan Police said in a statement.<\/p>\n
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\u201cCounter Terrorism Policing can now confirm they are leading an investigation into an incident which took place overnight near RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire,\u201d the police added.<\/p>\n
Calling the incident \u201cdeeply concerning\u201d, United Kingdom Prime Minister Andy Burnham said his government would take \u201cevery step necessary\u201d to protect the public.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what we know about the incident.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
What is RAF Fairford?<\/p>\n
Based in Gloucestershire, RAF Fairford is a British military base that hosts the United States Air Force\u2019s 501st Combat Support Wing.<\/p>\n
It is one of 12 UK bases, including RAF Lakenheath, which hosts the largest US force group in the UK and RAF Mildenhall, which supports refuelling and global operations.<\/p>\n
The Fairford base was also used by US forces during their attacks on Iran amid the ongoing conflict, during which they deployed B-1 and B-2 bombers.<\/p>\n
In March, then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer granted permission for \u201cdefensive\u201d US action against Iranian missile sites from two UK bases, including Fairford and Diego Garcia, in the British Indian Ocean Territory.<\/p>\n
What happened?<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Gloucestershire police said they received a call about \u201cthree suspicious vehicles\u201d travelling towards the base at 00:45 local time (23:45 GMT on Saturday).<\/p>\n
Broadcast aerial footage showed a bomb disposal robot moving around the vans, two of which had their rear doors open.<\/p>\n
Police believed the incident had been \u201ccontained\u201d and put a 400-metre (1,300-foot) cordon in place.<\/p>\n
A resident who called 999 told BBC Radio 4 on condition of anonymity that she arrived home in the nearby village of Whelford to find the driveway blocked and saw a \u201clarge group of hooded and masked men\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they saw me, they ran ahead of me \u2013 some into the field and some towards the neighbouring village of Kempsford. I then realised that something highly unusual was taking place,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
The woman told the BBC that she called the Ministry of Defence police at the airbase, but there was no answer; after calling 999 at 01:36 BST (00:36 GMT), she said, \u201cwithin 10 minutes the village was full of armed police\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am absolutely staggered that it was left to me as a member of the public to see and report this,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
About 85 households in the nearby village of Whelford were advised to evacuate. Those residents also spoke of \u201cheightened tensions\u201d in the area in recent weeks with frequent police patrols.<\/p>\n
What do we know about those arrested?<\/p>\n
Not much is known about the five men arrested in the incident.<\/p>\n
Gloucestershire police said they initially arrested the men on suspicion of offences under the Explosives Act.<\/p>\n
But they were subsequently arrested on suspicion of the \u201cpreparation of a terrorist act\u201d, the Metropolitan Police announced.<\/p>\n
The men currently remain in custody, and police have not disclosed where they are being kept.<\/p>\n
When asked whether police were looking for more suspects in connection with the incident, Maggie Blyth, the temporary chief constable of Gloucestershire police, said she believed it was \u201ccontained\u201d.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the suspects were \u201clooking to do big damage\u201d at the airbase.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had them under view for a long time, and we got them,\u201d he said, adding the US and the UK had been working together on the incident.<\/p>\n
Rob Geist Pinfold, an international security lecturer at King\u2019s College London, explained that under British law the identity of the men would not be disclosed unless they were charged.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t know anything about whether they\u2019re British nationals, whether they\u2019re foreign nationals, for example. And we also don\u2019t know what was in those vans,\u201d Pinfold told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump\u2019s statement there suggests these men were under investigation as well. So, we don\u2019t know how much of this is simply a member of the public spotting something suspicious that sounds pretty inept or whether this is some sort of well-planned and poorly executed attempt to cause damage at Fairford,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Is Iran linked to the incident?<\/p>\n
It remains unclear whether the suspects are connected to Iran.<\/p>\n
Tehran has previously said it would target US military bases that had launched attacks on Iran.<\/p>\n
Since February 28, when the US and Israel first launched their strikes on Iran, Tehran has targeted multiple military bases in the Gulf and the broader Middle East, including those in Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n
In early March, a loitering munition also struck an RAF base in Cyprus, where authorities claimed Iranian drones aimed at the base were also intercepted.<\/p>\n
Defence Minister Wes Streeting said on Sunday that he had been in contact with US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the UK was \u201cworking closely with our American friends\u201d.<\/p>\n
When asked whether Iran was involved, he said it would be \u201cirresponsible to speculate\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At least five men were arrested on Sunday morning on suspicion of the \u201cpreparation of a terrorist act\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":785187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5704,591,936,59,57,58,151,50,288,56,54,55,166618],"class_list":["post-785186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-conflict","tag-europe","tag-explainer","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-military","tag-news","tag-police","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-us-israel-war-on-iran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}