A total of 362 Indians rescued from war-torn Sudan, 114 of them hailing from Karnataka, reached Bengaluru on Friday. Sources at the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) said the evacuees arrived from Jeddah in a Saudia flight, at 4.30 pm.
The group of evacuees comprised 241 men, 107 women, 12 children and two infants, Manoj Rajan, Commissioner, Karnataka State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA), told DH. This is the second batch of Karnataka natives evacuated from Sudan as part of Operation Kaveri.
They included people hailing from Shivamogga (50), Mysuru (45), Bengaluru (9), Kalaburagi (4), Udupi (2), Ramanagara (2), Davangere (1) and Hassan (1). The first batch had five evacuees from Karnataka, all from Bengaluru.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar shared images of the arriving passengers along with a welcome note on Twitter. Earlier, Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan posted images from Jeddah before the flight’s take-off and said a “good number” of the passengers are from the Hakki Pikki tribe.
The Ministry of External Affairs launched Operation Kaveri on April 24 to evacuate Indian citizens stranded in Sudan’s conflict zones. The evacuees are being shifted to Jeddah and flown to Delhi and Mumbai.
Senior officers of the state government are manning three facilitation centres opened as part of the operation, in the airports at Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru. The facilitation centres at Delhi and Mumbai are arranging flight tickets for the evacuees hailing from Karnataka for their onward journey to the state.
KSDMA sources said medical health check-ups for the evacuees were provided at KIA and KSRTC buses were being arranged from the airport to their hometowns. The KSDMA Commissioner is the nodal officer for post-evacuation operations in the state.
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