Over 1,200 Indians stranded in Maldives set to sail back home

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 8

The Indian Navy on Friday commenced a massive operation to evacuate Indians from the island nation of Maldives.

Under operation “Samundra Setu”, two ships are expected to evacuate around 1,200 Indian nationals in a trip.

Around 1 pm, the Navy officials in coordination with the Indian Embassy in Maldives commenced embarkation of Indian nationals on board INS Jalashwa, an 18,000 tonne landing platform dock.

The second ship, INS Magar, will also join the repatriation mission in Male as part of the efforts to bring back stranded Indian nationals tomorrow.

The Jalashwa is scheduled to sail out tonight and will reach Kochi in Kerala two days later. The INS Magar is scheduled to sail out of Maldives either on Saturday evening or Sunday morning.

This is the biggest sea-route evacuation carried out the Navy since its efforts five years ago in March-April 2015 when 3,074, including 1,291 foreign nationals, were evacuated from Yemen after Saudi Arabia launched air strikes against Iranian-allied Houthi rebels.

Both ships are amphibious and are hollow from inside allowing huge carrying capacity of relief material, ration, machines and hundreds of troops.

In the past, the Indian Navy carried out similar non-combatant evacuation operations (NEO) from overseas. In 2006, “Operation Sukoon” was carried out to evacuate 2,200 Indians, Sri Lankans and Nepalese from Lebanon.

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