Drone strike hits fuel tank near Dubai airport as fire breaks out at major UAE oil terminal: Live updates

An Emirates plane prepares to land as smoke rises near Dubai airport

Here are the latest events in the Iran war as the conflict enters its third week:

• Dubai airport halted flights after a drone struck a fuel tank nearby in latest incident to disrupt travel at one of the world’s busiest hubs
• Oil loading operations have been suspended at the United Arab Emirates port of Fujairah after a drone attack
• The Israeli military said it has begun what it described as ‘limited ground’ against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon
• Oil prices rose further, with Brent North Sea Crude up three percent to $106.50 per barrel in Monday trading
• Sir Keir Starmer said the UK will not be drawn into a wider war as he knocks back a request from the US to deploy British warships
• Saudi Arabia intercepts more than 60 drones since midnight
• Donald Trump said the United States was in discussions with Iran but that Tehran was not ready for a deal to end the war
• The US President said NATO faces a ‘very bad’ future if US allies fail to help open the Strait of Hormuz
• But European leaders have pushed back against Trump’s appeal to send warships to Strait of Hormuz

Dubai International Airport was temporarily closed this morning after Iranian drones blew up a fuel tank nearby.

No injuries were reported and the fire was brought under control by Dubai Civil Defence teams.

There have been 95 flight cancellations today at the airport, with a further 75 delayed following the strikes, according to Flight Aware. The airport is one of the busiest travel hubs in the world serving more than 95 million passengers last year.

Airport bosses have urged travellers to use their official support channels in the wake of the disruptions.

Flights have gradually resumed this morning.

The UAE airline Emirates said it expected to operate a ‘limited schedule’ after 10:00 am Dubai time (0600 GMT) and that some flights had been cancelled.

It had earlier told passengers not to come to the airport and said it was working with authorities ‘to assess the situation and support the safe resumption of operations when possible’.

Emergency workers at the site of a strike on a residential building in Tehran

Massive explosions were heard in Beirut as Israel launched new attacks on the Lebanese capital before dawn, saying it was striking infrastructure related to the Iran-linked Hezbollah militia group.

The Israeli army has issued evacuation orders for many neighbourhoods in Beirut as well as southern Lebanon.

To date, more than 800,000 people have been displaced by Israel’s campaign in Lebanon.

In southern Lebanon, seven people were killed in Israeli airstrikes, according to authorities and news reports.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said two of them were paramedics responding to an earlier strike.

At least 850 people in Lebanon have been killed by Israeli strikes so far.

Not long after Israel’s military announced it had launched new strikes on Tehran, targeting infrastructure, explosions were heard in the Iranian capital and outlying areas.

Donald Trump has told a White House reporter oil prices will ‘drop like a rock’ when the Iran war is over, adding ‘I don’t believe it will be long’.

The US President said the conflict is a ‘very small price to pay’ following years of terror from the regime, PBS News Hour journalist Liz Landers said.

Trump also declined to say whether he sees American troops on the ground in Iran as he didn’t want to discuss strategy with the media.

by Adam Pogrund

Iran has mocked Donald Trump for ‘turning to other countries’ to help secure the Strait of Hormuz after European leaders rejected calls to send ships to the strategic passage.

The Iranian regime has forced shut the strait, a vital passageway through which around 20 per of the world’s oil flows every day, causing an enormous spike in oil prices and sparking fears of a global economic crisis.

The US President asked allies to join a mission to safeguard shipping in the Gulf but Keir Starmer told Donald Trump on Sunday night he wasn’t ready to agree to US demands to ‘send ships’ to protect oil tankers from Iranian attacks.

France, Germany, Italy and Greece have also said they won’t take part in efforts to reopen the channel.

In his first statement since becoming supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei vowed to continue using the ‘lever of blocking the Strait of Hormuz’ because it is where ‘the enemy is highly vulnerable’.

And Iran’s Foreign ​Minister Abbas Araghchi derided Trump for asking for help to reopen it while demanding Iran surrenders.

Qatar Airlines will resume flights to Ireland on Friday, Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs has said.

Helen McEntee made the announcement on the social media site X on Monday.

She said: Pleased to announce that we have been informed by Qatar Airlines that it will resume flights from Doha to Dublin on Friday, 20 March 2026. There will be four direct flights weekly from that date.”

Travel to and from the Middle East has been severely disrupted since war broke out in the region on February 28.

There were no flights between Ireland and the region for several days after the conflict started, with the first commercial flight from Dubai landing in Dublin on March 4.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog has warned Iran has weapons capable of unleashing ‘more havoc’ after he visited what he said was an cluster munition impact site in Israel.

‘They don’t understand that what they’re doing simply will bring more havoc on them’, Herzog said after visiting a home damaged by a missile attack in the coastal Israeli city of Rishon LeZion, near Tel Aviv.

‘This is the living room of a family where the cluster bomb fell straight into the living room, and you see the devastation’, he said in a statement released by his office.

Photos of Herzog, whose role is largely ceremonial, at the site showed a living-room damaged by the impact, chunks of cement blasted off the walls, broken windows and the floor littered by debris.

Israel’s first responders agency, Magen David Adom, said that one woman sustained minor injuries as a result of the strike despite being in a shelter.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu has released another video following rumours of his death last week.

Mr Netanyahu was filmed talking to Israeli citizens in the clip captioned ‘Follow the guidelines and win together.’

On Sunday he mocked fake news that he had died from a heart attack by filming himself calmly sipping a coffee in Tel Aviv.

He told supporters: ‘They say I’m dead? I’m dying for a coffee.’

HMS Dragon has been deployed to the Mediterranean

British warships face a ‘significant’ risk of being sunk if they are sent to the Straits of Hormuz, but they should be dispatched anyway, a former professional head of the Armed Forces said today.

General Sir Nick Carter said it was in the UK’s national interest to agree to Donald Trump’s request for naval help to combat Iranian forces throttling shipping in and out of the Gulf.

But he said that any Royal Navy vessels sent to either clear mines or escort tankers would be ‘vulnerable’ to attacks by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

It came as Sir Keir Starmer said the UK would not be drawn into a wider war amid Trump’s demand for Royal Navy warships to secure the key oil and gas route being blockaded by Tehran’s forces, amid questions over whether any are available.

The UK could potentially send mine-hunting drones to the region rather than a warship, having withdrawn its last mine counter-measures vessel (MCMV) just before the fighting started.

The IDF has announced it has destroyed one of Iran’s space centres over fears Israeli satellites could be taken out by Tehran.

The Israeli Air Force is said to have blown up a facility being used to develop attack capabilities to damage satellites, which it claimed posed a threat to space assets belonging to Israel and other countries.

The centre was used to develop the Shamran 1 satellite which was launched into space by the Revolutionary Guards in September 2024.

The IDF said in a statement: ‘For years, the Iranian terrorist regime has invested significant resources in developing space warfare capabilities, as part of its efforts to expand its military capabilities and undermine regional and international stability.’

The US is ‘fine’ with some Iranian, Indian and Chinese ships getting through the Strait of Hormuz for now, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Monday.

‘We are seeing more and more of the fuel ships start to go through.

‘The Iranian ships have been getting out already, and we’ve let that happen to supply the rest of the world. We’ve seen Indian ships go out now … we believe some Chinese ships have gone out,’ he told CNBC in an interview.

‘That should start ramping up before there are any of the flotillas or protective armadas in the Gulf.

‘So we think that there will be a natural opening that the Iranians are letting out. And for now, we’re fine with that. We want the world to be well supplied,’ Bessent said.

Asked if there were any tools the Trump administration would use to mitigate higher prices and impacts from the war outside of oil reserve releases, Bessent told CNBC ‘it will depend on the duration of the conflict.’

A smoke plume rises from an ongoing fire near Dubai International Airport

The latest shutdown of Dubai’s main airport because of a drone strike disrupted thousands of British travellers’ travel plans.

Dubai International Airport announced at 1.36am GMT on Monday it had suspended flights after a drone hit a nearby fuel tank.

Many Emirates flights already in the air were diverted, while others waiting to take off were cancelled.

Five flights from UK airports returned to their points of origin.

They included a flight from Edinburgh, which had made it as far as Egyptian airspace before it turned back.

Passengers onboard a flight from London Stansted nearly made it to Dubai, but were diverted to Vienna, Austria.

The suspension of flights also affected thousands of people who were hoping to finally return to the UK after being stranded in the Middle East – or other parts of the world where UK flights connect in the region – since the start of the US-Israeli campaign against Iran.

All seven Emirates flights from Dubai to London Heathrow on Monday were cancelled.