Evacuations near RAF base have reignited debate as Cypriots question the risks of hosting western military sites
All his life, like his parents before him, Giorgos Konstantinos has learned to live next to RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus.
He has dealt with the roar of planes, the comings and going of military vehicles and the war games. But never has Konstantinos, the village’s vice-mayor, witnessed anything quite like the events of the past two days.
“We live here, we’ve got used to all the exercises, we’ve got used to all the planes, but what we never imagined is this,” the retired lawyer said on Tuesday, standing in front of the main gate to the facility. “Who would have thought of a drone flying through our skies, exploding on the other side of that fence and forcing all of us to leave?”
In a moment, he said, the dangers of living next to a British base, when conflict was raging not so very far away, had suddenly become very real. In the early hours of Monday, sirens had begun to sound after the unmanned one-way attack drone crashed into RAF Akrotiri’s runway.
