Hundreds of Indians continue to remain stranded in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, where a civil war erupted six days ago killing at least 300 from various ethnic factions.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) held an “emergency assistance meeting” to plan evacuation of the stranded nationals from South Sudan.
Some of the stranded Indians told The Hindu that the Embassy of India had been collecting contact details and addresses of all Indian citizens located in Juba but they remain worried about the scale of the evacuation since the civil war was not yet over.
However, indicating growing preparedness for the emergency measure, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who chaired the Tuesday’s meeting, said, “We are evacuating Indian nationals from Juba [South Sudan].”
Lull in fighting
Veer Dadhia, an Indian citizen in Juba, told The Hindu that on the ground, the situation had improved with a lull in the fighting since Monday evening. The airport, which is seven kilometres from big hotels of the city, has also begun to operate though not on commercial scale.
“Emergency and military flights have been taking off from the airport and we hope that we too will be evacuated,” Mr. Dadhia said, indicating that the airspace over Juba had been re-opened after several days.
Mr. Dadhia and several others reached out to Ms. Swaraj on Twitter over the past six days revealing the scale of the threat they faced in the civil war. He said the Indian Embassy had been collecting details of location of all Indians and the entire procedure of evacuation was likely to take some time. The Embassy had also sent out messages on social media platforms for registration of Indian citizens in Juba so that they could be evacuated in short notice.
Despite the growing preparation, there are doubts over how long the lull in the fighting last as a negotiated solution to the conflict remains elusive.
