New Delhi: The Indian Air Force (IAF) on Saturday brought back 629 Indian nationals evacuated from Ukraine and the crisis-hit nation’s neighbouring countries, including Romania, Slovakia and Poland, under ‘Operation Ganga’, news agency ANI reported.
An official press release by the IAF said, “Three C-17 heavy-lift transport aircraft of the IAF, which had taken off from Hindan Airbase on Friday, landed back to the base on Saturday morning with the evacuated Indians.”
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had roped in IAF in the evacuation mission to speed up the process. The IAF aircraft are also carrying relief material to the neighbouring countries of Ukraine.
"They had carried 16.5 tonnes of relief material on the outbound journey," IAF tweeted.
As per ANI, so far the IAF has flown 10 flights to and fro Ukraine and its neighbouring countries carrying 2,056 passengers and 26 tonnes of relief material.
Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan said that around 11,000 Indians have been evacuated from Ukraine so far.
On February 24, Russia invaded Ukraine that left thousands of Indian nationals stranded in conflict-hit Ukraine.
On Saturday, The Indian Embassy in Ukraine tweeted, “Exploring all possible mechanisms to evacuate 🇮🇳n citizens in Sumy, safely & securely. Discussed evacuation & identification of exit routes with all interlocuters including Red Cross. Control room will continue to be active until all our citizens are evacuated. Be Safe Be Strong.”
Meanwhile, Indian authorities have also requested Russia to provide safe passage to Indian nationals via Russia to crossover.
Currently, the Indian authorities are making efforts to safely evacuate their citizens from Ukraine via neighbouring countries. For the same, Indian has also sent a special convoy to Poland, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, and Hungary.
So far, two Indian nationals have lost their lives and one has been injured in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. One of the students was killed in shelling while standing in a queue at a grocery store, and the other one died due to a cardiac arrest.