Mourners at Nuseirat refugee camp, Gaza
On the evening of 12 December 2024, Israel bombed the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza without warning. A post office sheltering displaced families was hit; nearby houses were shredded.
More than 30 Palestinians were killed and over 50 wounded. Entire families died, their names posted online within minutes.
Declassified can now reveal that a spy plane owned by a US contractor to whom the RAF is outsourcing its spy flights circled over Nuseirat refugee camp the night before the bombing.
Publicly available flight-tracking data show that in the hours before the blast, and again afterwards, two surveillance aircraft operating from RAF Akrotiri, Britain’s military base on Cyprus, circled close to or over Gaza.
One of these was a RAF Shadow R1 (registration ZZ419) surveillance plane that flew towards Gaza in mid-afternoon before vanishing from public tracking near the territory.
But the other belonged to Straight Flight Nevada Commercial Leasing LLC, a subsidiary of America’s Sierra Nevada Corporation. This was a Beechcraft Super King Air 350 with the registration N60125 and call sign CROOK11.
The presence of this US aircraft alongside RAF spy planes raises uncomfortable questions about whether British intelligence, directly or indirectly, assisted Israel’s targeting of the camp.
Further, the presence of the US contractor over Gaza as early as December 2024 appears to contradict the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) claim that the company was only hired to take over the missions in recent weeks due to strain on RAF’s Shadow R1 fleet.
The MoD insists the flights are “unarmed” and “solely related to hostage rescue”, and denies aiding Israel’s prosecution of the war. But there is no known mechanism to ensure that data shared with the Israeli authorities is not repurposed for attacks in serious violations of international humanitarian law.
A pattern in the skies
On 11 December 2024, CROOK11 left Akrotiri at 20:14 UTC, arriving over Gaza at 21:10 UTC. It orbited above Nuseirat for around 20 minutes, its fixed track consistent with detailed optical or signals surveillance, before heading back to Cyprus, switching off its transponder en route at 22:17 UTC, and landing shortly after.
The following day, the RAF’s Shadow ZZ419 left Akrotiri at 15:05 UTC, went dark near Gaza, and reappeared less than an hour before the bombing.
CROOK11 took off at 19:08 UTC on 12 December, which social media reports suggest coincided with the time Israel began to bomb Nuseirat. The plane then held its position just off Gaza’s coast for around half an hour and was circling near Gaza less than an hour after the bombing.
Such timing lends weight to concerns that surveillance data may have been shared with Israel and used for target selection.
Under Article 16 of the International Law Commission’s Draft Articles on State Responsibility, providing intelligence of clear military utility that is employed in an unlawful attack could expose Britain to liability as a party to the conflict.
The UK’s Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office, which oversees UK public authorities such as the intelligence agencies, refused to tell Declassified whether it had reviewed intelligence-sharing from these missions, citing its exemption from such disclosures under the Freedom of Information Act.
600 flights
Britain has now conducted more than 600 surveillance flights over Gaza since October 2023, according to analysis by the London-based research charity Action on Armed Violence.
The MoD admits that by mid-2025 the RAF’s small Shadow fleet of surveillance aircraft was “strained”, prompting the hiring of Straight Flight Nevada to provide an equivalent platform.
The planes are owned and crewed by the contractor but operate from Akrotiri and perform the same reconnaissance roles as the RAF’s own aircraft.
The arrangement first became public last month after a mishap spotted by journalists at Palestine Deep Dive: a Beechcraft with callsign CROOK12 failed to disable its transponder while circling over Khan Younis.
This showed for the first time that contractor-flown aircraft were operating over Gaza. Senior British military figures confirmed the UK hired US contractors for the Gaza flights.
Declassified’s finding shows that the arrangement has been of much longer standing and that the MoD hired the US contractor months before previously believed.
Flight-tracking data show that a Beechcraft belonging to the US contractor with the registration N60125 arrived at Akrotiri on 5 December 2024, having flown from Hagerstown, Maryland, via St John’s, Reykjavik and Palermo.
This was at a time when four of the RAF’s five Shadows were operational; a fact that casts doubt on the MoD’s claim that the outsourcing was purely to cover for aircraft undergoing maintenance.
The MoD refuses to disclose the cost or duration of its contract with Straight Flight Nevada, citing operational sensitivity.
A history of deadly strikes
The 12 December bombing was not the only lethal incident preceded by British-linked surveillance flights.
On 8 June 2024, Israeli forces attacked Nuseirat in a raid to free four hostages, killing more than 270 Palestinians and injuring hundreds. In the two weeks prior, the RAF had flown 24 missions over or near Gaza. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights later concluded the raid may amount to a “war crime”.
Defence minister Luke Pollard later confirmed that the UK had shared intelligence with “relevant authorities” in relation to hostage rescue, but declined to say whether this information had been used in the Nuseirat raid, citing operational security.
Foreign secretary David Lammy has come under fire for obfuscating the role of the spy planes, for which the MoD had previously confirmed “information relating to hostage rescue is passed to the relevant Israeli authorities.”
What Lammy has not addressed is how intelligence-sharing carries inherent risks. As parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee has noted, data can be repurposed for entirely different ends, sometimes unlawful ones.
Once handed over, Britain cannot dictate or monitor the use of intelligence. The government insists that it takes “careful steps” to control what information is shared with Israel but without further elaboration.
Whilst being questioned over the flights in July 2025 on BBC Radio, Lammy said that “It would be quite wrong for the British government to assist in the prosecution of this war in Gaza. We are not doing that. I would never do that”.
‘Indefensible’
Still, the spy flights have prompted sharp criticism. Liberal Democrat defence spokesperson Helen Maguire has urged ministers to explain what safeguards prevent UK-sourced intelligence from being abused in Israeli operations.
Jeremy Corbyn has called flights “utterly indefensible” during “a genocide livestreamed around the world”.
One senior military source told The Times: “Instead of sending a message to Israel that we aren’t going to do surveillance for you, we are happy to hire an American company and pay for it.”
In December 2024, an Amnesty International report urged states such as the UK to halt military and security assistance to Israel “in light of the clear risk” of enabling serious violations of international law.
Despite such warnings, that same month prime minister Keir Starmer told personnel at Akrotiri that “quite a bit of what goes on here can’t necessarily be talked about… We can’t tell the world what you’re doing here.”
Secrecy and suspicion
For those in Nuseirat on 12 December, the sequence was brutally simple: the hum of an aircraft, hours later the shockwave of bombs, then the digging for survivors. From afar, the picture is less clear but equally troubling.
The government maintains that no British citizens remain among the hostages in Gaza, raising further doubts over the stated rationale for the flights. Civil society groups argue that the missions should be suspended until Israel ends its campaign of mass bombardment, siege and starvation.
Declassified asked the MoD whether the Beechcraft flights in December were directed or coordinated by the UK.
The department did not deny this and told Declassified that the flights are unarmed, solely for locating hostages, and that the UK controls what intelligence is shared with Israel, limiting it to hostage rescue information. No further details could be given for operational security reasons.
Campaigners are now calling for a full public inquiry into Britain’s military collaboration with Israel. The Gaza Tribunal, convened by Corbyn’s team, promises to “uncover the truth” about the UK’s role and potential complicity in genocide.
Any investigation by international courts into alleged war crimes will likely examine the part played by contractor-flown aircraft like those of Straight Flight Nevada.
In the meantime, the transponders have been turned off, the flight paths made invisible. And Britain’s role in Gaza’s skies, and perhaps in its ruins, remains hidden behind officialdom.
Source: Declassified UK
