Greece will continue to station F-16 fighter jets in Cyprus, reports in Greece said on Tuesday, with Greek fighter jets having remained on the island since being deployed in March after the British Akrotiri air force base was hit by an Iranian-made drone.

Greek public broadcaster ERT reported that at Monday’s meeting of the country’s national security council (Kysea), it was decided there will continue to be a constant presence of Greek F-16s on the island, with jets continuing to be rotated through the Andreas Papandreou airbase in Paphos.

Later in the day, newspaper Proto Thema reported that two F-16s will be stationed in Paphos, while it was also confirmed that the Greek frigate the Elli remains in Cypriot waters.

Monday’s Kysea meeting also saw Greece decide to withdraw two batteries of the MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air missile system from the Aegean island of Karpathos and the town of Didymoteicho, in western Thrace, with both batteries having been deployed in March.

Eyebrows had been raised in Turkey over the batteries’ deployment at the time, with Didymoteicho in particular being located just metres from the Maritsa river, which forms the border between Greece and Turkey in Thrace, though Greece had insisted the battery had been placed to protect Bulgaria from the potential threat of Iranian fire.

Like Greece, Turkey had also deployed F-16s to Cyprus in the aftermath of March’s drone strike, with six Turkish F-16s stationed at the north’s Ercan (Tymbou) airport ever since.

Greek government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis had at the time questioned the legality of the Turkish F-16s’ deployment, saying that it is “prohibited” for Turkey to use the aircraft for “offensive actions outside the country”.

In the same vein, Greece’s foreign ministry’s spokeswoman Lana Zochiou had insisted at the time that her own country’s deployment was “purely defensive in nature”, while Omer Celik, the spokesman of Turkey’s ruling AK Party, said of his own country’s deployment that “we have to consider the security of the TRNC”.

On the seas, Greece was joined by France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom in deploying naval assets to Cyprus’ vicinity, prompting Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman to quip that there is “barely any space left in the sea” surrounding the island.

Greece had initially deployed the frigate the Kimon, which was described by its Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis as the “pride of the Greek fleet”, and which only entered service at the end of last year. The Elli is somewhat older, having been commissioned in 1982.