---

Middle East and North Africa

There is a good deal of evidence that many British nationals have left Yemen in recent months in response to our advice, although it is not always easy to track them all individually. Most British nationals who remain appear to be dual nationals, so they may not intend to leave under any circumstances—they are Yemeni as well as British. The number of people holding only British nationality is certainly down to a few hundred as far as we can see—fewer than 300 would be a fair estimate. There are British military assets in the region, but I am not going into the operational tasking of those assets. I restate that, whatever the assets we may have in the region, conducting a safe evacuation from a place where it would be difficult for people even to get to the airport if greater violence breaks out is not something on which people can rely.