A group of 168 Indian nationals stranded in Yemen were flown to Kochi from Djibouti on Thursday. An Indian Air Force aircraft carrying the evacuees, mostly nurses from Kerala, touched down here at 1.40 a.m. Eighteen of them are from Tamil Nadu.
Jimmy George, 37, from Kottayam, who along with his wife, Siji, had been working as a schoolteacher at Aden for the past 10 years, said the city had been witnessing a pitched battle between the Saudi-led coalition and Shia rebels for the past few days. “Though allowed to leave the country a few weeks ago by my employer, I couldn’t get our papers stamped as the government offices had downed shutters. Later, I visited the house of an emigration officer there to get exit permission stamped on my passport, but the situation had already turned volatile,” Mr. George said.
Manju, a lab technician who works at Saber Hospital, Aden, said many people were stranded in Sana’a. Besides, a number of nurses in the hospital were not evacuated as they had been in the operation theatre during the time of rescue. The hospital authorities had not even paid the full salary and overtime arrears of many evacuated.
