Officials are planning to evacuate hundreds of thousands of Britons as fires raged across the Gulf last night.

After the US air strikes on Tehran, and Iran’s suicide-drone revenge attacks on tourist hot-spots including Dubai, 94,000 British citizens have registered their contact details with the Foreign Office – many of them holiday-makers visiting the region or transiting through it.

It came as Keir Starmer agreed to a US request to use British military bases to hit Iranian missile sites.

The Prime Minister said: ‘Our partners in the Gulf have asked us to do more to defend them, and it’s my duty to protect British lives. This is in line with international law and we are publishing a summary of our legal advice.’

Sir Keir added: ‘We all remember the mistakes of Iraq and we have learned those lessons. We were not involved in the initial strikes on Iran and we will not join offensive action now. But Iran is pursuing a scorched-earth strategy so we are supporting the collective self-defence of our allies and our people in the region.’

With 94,000 already registering with the Foreign Office, hundreds of thousands are expected to follow suit, and ministers are understood to be drawing up contingency plans to evacuate them over land to Saudi Arabia from the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar.

As Iran fired missiles and drones in retaliation for the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday:

• Donald Trump said Iran’s new leadership had agreed to hold talks with him as nearly 50 senior figures in the regime – including former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – were killed in air strikes;
• Three US soldiers were killed and five injured in Iranian attacks;
• An RAF Typhoon intercepted a drone over Qatar and hundreds of personnel took defensive actions in Bahrain, Cyprus and other countries;
• Green Party leader Zack Polanski urged the Prime Minister to condemn the ‘illegal and unprovoked’ US strikes;
• Markets were braced for oil prices to surge as a result of the chaos in the region which could fuel inflation across the world;
• The Strait of Hormuz – through which a quarter of the world’s oil supplies travel – came to a standstill as 150 ships dropped anchor following attacks on tankers.

Countries across the Gulf scrambled to close their airspaces as the US and Israel launched a co-ordinated attack on Iranian targets over the weekend, followed by retaliatory drone and missile strikes across the Middle East.

Travel plans were plunged into chaos after airports in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait were hit, killing at least one person and injuring 11.

Nearly 6,000 flights have been cancelled globally and almost 30,000 delayed since the conflict broke out, according to flight-tracking website Flightradar24. It marks one of the biggest disruptions to travel since the pandemic.

In the UK, 24 of the 56 flights that were due to depart from Heathrow to the Middle East on Saturday were cancelled.

The Government’s advice for most people in the region is to stay put. Evacuation plans will be enacted only if it becomes clear that the airspace will remain closed for a prolonged period.

The Foreign Office urged British nationals in Bahrain, Israel, Palestine, Qatar and the UAE to register online so they can be kept up to date.

‘If you are a British national in those countries, you should shelter in place and register your presence,’ it said in a post on X.

The scale of the operation is unprecedented, with the ‘register your presence’ scheme never having handled so many people.

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper is leading the scheme and has spoken to UK ambassadors from the region to discuss the plans.

All options are said to be on the table, including one that involves stranded Britons travelling by road to Saudi Arabia, from where they could return home.

Officials are in talks with regional airlines, including Emirates, Qatar and Etihad, to help with the evacuation. It could become the biggest mass evacuation in a generation, after several thousand British citizens were evacuated last summer after tit-for-tat missile strikes between Israel and Iran.

More than 15,000 were evacuated from Afghanistan in August 2021 after the Taliban took power.

Amanda Murdoch, 55, from the Lake District, was transiting through Dubai on her way home from New Zealand when she became stranded.

She had been visiting her eldest son and was due to meet the rest of her family in Edinburgh.

Mrs Murdoch described ‘utter carnage’ at the airport, with no announcements except for one telling people to leave the building, and boards displaying cancellations. She said there was a ‘mass exodus’ and it took her three hours to leave the airport, which was packed with thousands of people.

Her airline, Emirates, has advised passengers travelling before or on March 5 to rebook or request a refund. But Mrs Murdoch said she had been unable to contact the company, with phone lines cutting off and live chat features overwhelmed.

And while she registered with the Foreign Office, she had received no further communication from it.

Kirsty Greyling is on holiday in Dubai with her toddler and said the ‘vibe was quite fraught’.

She was sitting in a restaurant opposite Dubai’s famous Fairmont The Palm Hotel when it was hit by Iranian strikes.

They slept in the basement of their hotel overnight and were waiting to find out when they could be rebooked on a flight home on Saturday night.

‘We do feel safe inside the hotel,’ she told ITV News. 

‘We can’t go outside the hotel… you can hear the odd missile in the background.’

Judy Trotter was supposed to return to London from her Dubai holiday on Saturday, but was told all flights were cancelled.

She told the BBC: ‘I’ve met people who were very upset about their travel plans, there were thousands of people in the airport. I met people who told me they were missing funerals.’

She added a lot of passengers ‘were in transit, just passing through’ and are now stuck.

Authorities in Abu Dhabi said a drone targeting Zayed International Airport was intercepted overnight on Saturday, leading to ‘falling debris’ which killed one person and injured seven.

Across the region, flights were cancelled and airports closed. Dubai International Airport – one of the world’s busiest for international flights – halted operations after an ‘incident’ injured four staff. 

All flights from Dubai International and Dubai Al Maktoum were suspended until further notice, and airports in Doha were also closed.