NEW DELHI: For 100+plus families, Thursday morning brought a wave of relief and good tidings as Operation Sindhu kicked in. The first flight under this rescue scheme touched down at Indira Gandhi International Airport early morning, carrying 110 Indian students evacuated from conflict?torn Iran.
For more than 100 Indian students at Urmia Medical University, there was anxiety and apprehension till the rescue efforts kicked in. On June 17, they were escorted overland from northern Iran into Armenia, before boarding a special flight from Yerevan on June 18.
Operation Sindhu, launched by India¡¯s Ministry of External Affairs on June 18, aims to repatriate its nationals amid the burgeoning Iran¨CIsrael crisis that has triggered chaos in the world¡¯s geo-political order.?
On Wednesday MEA spokesperson Randhir?Jaiswal took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to? confirm that the evacuation mission had kicked off, and government officials were in touch with Iranian and Armenian authorities. In a tweet accompanied by pictures of students aboard the carrier, he also reiterated that India ¡°accords the highest priority to the safety and security of her nationals abroad.¡±?
Kirti?Vardhan?Singh, Minister of State for External Affairs, who was at the Delhi airport to receive the students, confirmed additional flights are expected soon, including routes via Turkmenistan, supported by 24¡Á7 control rooms and embassy helplines.
?"We have planes ready. We will be sending another plane today. We are evacuating some more people from Turkmenistan. Our missions have opened 24 hour lines for any request for evacuation. As the situation evolves, we will be sending more planes to evacuate Indian nationals," Singh said, while speaking with reporters at the airport.
Meanwhile, for the young students returning home, the events of the past few days kept flashing by. Some evacuees described harrowing scenes, and recalled the ¡°drones and missiles.¡± ¡°Our neighbourhood was bombed,¡± said Mir Khalif, an MBBS student.?
Others described the chaotic atmosphere that engulfed Tehran following the Israeli airstrikes that targeted nuclear and military sites, including the Natanz facility, triggering Iranian retaliatory missile and drone strikes.?
An estimated 4,000 nationals, nearly half of whom are students, remain in Iran.
The Israel¨CIran war, which broke out on June 13, has already claimed hundreds of lives. The casualty in Iran has crossed 639, with widespread infrastructure damage including disruption to the Middle Eastern airspace and travel .
During the Ukraine-Russia crisis in 2022, India had launched Operation Ganga to evacuate thousands of its citizens, mostly students stranded in Ukraine. Following Russia¡¯s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, commercial flights were suspended that led to over 20,000 Indian nationals being stranded. The Indian government swiftly coordinated with neighbouring countries including Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia to evacuate those stranded.?
Special flights operated by Air India, IndiGo, and SpiceJet brought back over 18,000 students in multiple phases. Indian embassies and volunteers worked around the clock, arranging transportation from conflict zones like Kharkiv and Sumy to safer borders.