DFA braces for Middle East crises

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said it is ready to provide assistance to almost two million Filipinos in the Middle East should tensions continue to escalate between various countries engaged in conflict.

“Of course, we are very much concerned with what is happening in the Middle East because whether we like it or not we would be affected by the outcome of developments taking place there,” Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano said at the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Vietnam yesterday.

He expressed his concern over last week’s ballistic missile attack in Saudi Arabia, which targeted the heavily populated airport area in Riyadh.

The DFA is also monitoring the situation in Lebanon after Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates ordered their nationals to leave the country.

In Iraq, Cayetano said the DFA is monitoring the situation in the Kurdistan Region after tensions between Baghdad and Erbil went up in the aftermath of an independence referendum in the region.

Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Sarah Lou Arriola, head of the DFA’s Office of Migrant Workers Affairs, said the DFA is ready to raise alert levels and issue deploy rapid response teams to assist in mandatory evacuation if the situation calls for it.