An IAF plane carrying 190 Indian nationals evacuated from Yemen landed in Mumbai in the government’s first major mission to rescue Indians stranded in the strife-torn nation.
The flight landed at 4 a.m at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Kirit Somaiya who was at the airport, welcomed the waiting family members and said the Maharashtra government had made arrangements for their accommodation free of cost.
ADVERTISEMENT
The Railways would also make further arrangements for their travel along with a travel allowance.
A majority of the evacuees who landed in Mumbai are from from Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, while some are from Maharashtra.
They were part of as many as 350 Indians who reached Djibouti after being evacuated on a Navy vessel from Aden, the seaport city of Yemen.
ADVERTISEMENT
PTI adds
A spokesperson in the External Affairs Ministry has said of the 350 evacuees, 206 belong to Kerala, 40 are from Tamil Nadu, 31 from Maharashtra, 23 from West Bengal and 22 from Delhi, besides other states.
The Indians were evacuated late Monday night by INS Sumitra, which was diverted from its anti-piracy patrol in the region. It waited for hours to get local clearances as heavy fighting was reported in the city.
Meanwhile, Central Railway will be adding extra coaches to the trains heading towards Kerala, Chennai and Kolkata to ensure hassle-free travel for evacuees to reach their destinations.
“We would be adding extra coaches to the Kerala-bound Mangala Express, Chennai-bound Chennai Mail and Kolkata-bound Duronto Express to facilitate their (evacuees’) early home going. While 60 evacuees would be travelling to Kerala, 40 to Chennai and 30 to Kolkata,” General Manager, Central Railway, Sunil Kumar Sood told PTI here.
Sood said the railways have requested normal passengers who have booked tickets under emergency quota to postpone their trip by a day so that their tickets could be used for evacuees, to which they have agreed.
Meanwhile, one of the evacuees, who identified herself as Faiju, said the Yemini city of Sana’a is almost destroyed in the civil war and fighters have moved to the seaport city of Aden.
Narrating her plight, Faiju, who used to work as a nurse in Sana’a, said, “We were not given any salary. We were also made to work overtime as all the local nurses had fled our hospital,” she said, adding there could be about 300 Indian people who are still stuck up in Aden.