New Delhi: The External Affairs Ministry on Sunday said that a record number of over 2,300 Indians nationals were evacuated from Libya in the preceding 24 hours as part of ‘Operation Safe Homecoming’.
Operation Safe Homecoming was launched by the Central Government to bring home thousands of Indian nationals stranded in conflict-torn Libya.
“Three special AI flights from Tripoli and one from Sebha (Libya), besides the Red Star One ferry (from Misurata) accomplished this task. By late evening today more than 2/3rd of our nationals would have been pulled out of Libya, totalling over 12,000,” an External Affairs Ministry statement said.
“The second Boeing 747 sortie brought home another 400 passengers from Sebha (Libya) to Mumbai. Daily sorties have been scheduled to evacuate all the remaining persons from Sebha, over the next few days.”
“Fly Dubai will undertake further daily sorties to clear out the remaining 360 passengers from Dzerba (Tunisia). 580 persons have already returned to India from Tunis, in the last couple of days,” it added.
The Ministry also said that in the second round, MV Scotia Prince picked up all the remaining 972 Indian nationals from Benghazi (Libya), and is headed back to Alexandria, where it is expected to reach on March 07.
“The passengers will be flown back to India on four special flights (one of them IL76) on March 8 and 9,” the statement said.
ANI
