By PTI
NEW DELHI: An Indian Air Force (IAF) flight with 119 Indians and 27 foreigners landed at Hindon air base here from Romanian capital Bucharest on Thursday morning, sources said.
These Indians and foreigners were stranded in Ukraine due to the Russian military offensive that began on February 24, they mentioned.
This was the 17th flight that the IAF has operated to evacuate people stranded in Ukraine.
India has been evacuating its citizens from war-torn Ukraine’s neighbouring countries such as Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland as the Ukrainian airspace has been shut since February 24.
The IAF flight — which was operated on a C-17 military transport aircraft — landed in Delhi around 5.40 am on Thursday, sources said.
Minister of State for External Affairs Rajkumar Ranjan Singh received the Indians and foreigners at the air base, they said.
The last big group of 600 Indian students evacuated from the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy has reached Poland.
The students had boarded a special train from Lviv for Poland.
They are likely to board flights to India on Thursday.
The students reached Lviv in western Ukraine from Poltava on another special train.
“We have reached Poland, from here we are expected to take flight for India,” said Jisna Jiji, a 25-year-old medical student.
Covering hundreds of miles across Ukraine, using multiple means of transport, the students were evacuated from the war-hit east European country after their two weeks of excruciating stay in beleaguered Sumy.
The Indian government is carrying out a most delicate and challenging evacuation exercise under Operation Ganga to help stranded Indians leave Ukraine.
The operation in Sumy began on Tuesday morning when the last big group of 600 Indians was evacuated from the city.
The Indian nationals were taken from Sumy in a convoy of 13 buses escorted by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to Poltava, Anshad Ali, a student coordinator, said.
The students are enduring a strenuous journey to escape the war-hit region.
This is the second attempt to evacuate them from Sumy, which has been witnessing heavy shelling and intense gunfire ever since a Russian offensive on Ukraine began last month.
For two weeks, the Indian students in Sumy waged a doughty battle in bomb shelters and basements of their hostels in frigid weather, low on food, drinking water and other essential supplies, as Russian forces clobbered the city with rockets and heavy gunfire.
