Russia-Ukraine War: IAF flight carrying 210 Indians land at Hindan airbase

IANS

New Delhi, March 6

The Indian Air Force has evacuated 210 more Indian nationals who were stranded in the crisis-hit Ukraine.

“An IAF flight carrying 210 Indians from Bucharest, Romania has landed at Hindan airbase near Delhi in the early hours of Sunday,” an official said.

Eleven more special flights are expected to operate on Sunday from Budapest, Kosice, Rzeszow and Bucharest to bring in more than 2,200 Indians back home.

The Ministry of Civil Aviation had earlier informed that under ‘Operation Ganga’, about 3,000 Indians were airlifted on Saturday by 15 special flights from Ukraine’s neighbouring countries.

“These included 12 special civilian and 3 IAF flights. With this, more than 13,700 Indians have been brought back since the special flights began on February 22.

The number of Indians brought back by 55 special civilian flights goes up to 11,728,” the Ministry had said.

Till date, the IAF has flown 10 sorties to bring back 2,056 passengers, while taking 26 tonnes of relief load to these countries, as part of Operation Ganga.

Three C-17 heavy lift transport aircraft of the IAF, which had taken off on Friday from the Hindan air base, landed back at Hindan on Saturday morning. These flights evacuated 629 Indian nationals from Romania, Slovakia and Poland. Saturday’s civilian flights included five from Budapest, four from Suceva, one from Kosice and two from Rzeszow.

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine intensified in the early hours of February 24 after Russian forces launched a major assault on Ukraine, firing missiles on cities and military installations and posing a serious threat to the Indian citizens residing there. Since then, India is evacuating its citizens from the war-torn region.