India begins evacuation of its nationals from Libya | Two Air India special flights are scheduled to bring the passengers
India begins evacuation of its nationals from Libya | Two Air India special flights are scheduled to bring the passengers
NEW DELHI: India on Saturday began operations to evacuate its citizens stranded in Libya. Two Air India special flights are scheduled to bring home more than 600 passengers here from Tripoli in the early hours of Sunday.
Air India flew two planes to Libya early on Saturday after getting permission from the authorities there.
The first flight is scheduled to touch down here close to midnight. Around the time the second special flight was getting ready to take off from Tripoli, passenger ship Scotia Prince, which can carry 1,200 passengers, set sail from Port Said in Egypt. It would reach Benghazi by Monday afternoon.
Ship chartered
To facilitate the safe movement of 18,000 Indians stranded, India chartered a 600-capacity passenger ship on Saturday. The ship is in the Mediterranean region, the Ministry of External Affairs said.
These passenger ships are in addition to the two Indian Naval Ships that left Mumbai on Saturday for Libya. INS Jalashwa and INS Mysore will ferry the Indians to cities either in Malta or Egypt, from where they will be brought back home by air.
The Ministry has posted additional personnel to assist the Indian Embassy in Tripoli. Posts on the Foreign Secretary’s micro-blogging site, Twitter, said the Ambassador and the staff worked non-stop till the early morning of Saturday to arrange for shuttle services to the airport. And these vehicles had to pass several checkpoints.
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Posted by vijay on Feb 26 2011. Filed under Breaking News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
