The evacuation of Indians from Iran and Israel under Operation Sindhu gathered steam on Friday, with Tehran briefly lifting airspace restrictions to allow a flight to India, as the conflict entered its second week.
After Armenia, Turkmenistan too has joined the evacuation exercise, allowing Indians to cross over from Iran and fly out of its capital Ashgabat.
Two evacuation flights landed in Delhi on Friday night, one from Mashhad in northeastern Iran around 11.30pm, and the other from Ashgabat after midnight.
While land border crossings have been the mainstay for exiting both Iran and Israel, Iran made an exception and eased its airspace restrictions briefly to allow a flight to India ferrying Indians who had made it to Mashhad by road.
Iran’s deputy chief of mission in India, Mohammad Javad Hosseini, told reporters that 1,000 Indians had reached Mashhad — the country’s second largest city — from Tehran via Qom. He said they would be sent back to India on three Mahan Airlines flights over the weekend.
News agency PTI quoted Hosseini as saying that about 10,000 Indians were living in Iran and those wishing to return home were being evacuated.
“We consider Indians as our own people. Iran’s airspace is closed but because of this issue, we are making arrangements to open it for the safe passage of Indian nationals,” Hosseini said.
The Indian mission in Tehran and the external affairs ministry in Delhi had earlier this week advised Indians to move away from Tehran as the conflict escalated and the two warring countries targeted each other’s capitals.
The flight from Mashhad was the second evacuation flight ferrying Indians based in Iran. The first batch of 110 students arrived in Delhi on Thursday on an Indigo flight from the Armenian capital of Yerevan.
The evacuation effort from Israel — announced on Thursday — saw the first batch of Indians cross into Egypt via the Taba border crossing in the early hours of Friday.
There is no word yet on how and when they would be brought back to India. Indians in Israel have been advised to use either the Egyptian or Jordanian border crossings to exit the country.
This is the second evacuation from Israel in less than two years, the earlier one having come in October 2023 in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack of October 7.
After the situation eased, the number of Indians in Israel increased with Tel Aviv requesting New Delhi to send construction workers since Palestinians were no longer being issued permits to work in the sector.
Apart from construction workers, a large number of Indians work in Israel as caregivers to the elderly or as IT professionals.
A Reuters report said that countries including China, Japan, Italy, New Zealand, Greece, Germany, France, Bulgaria, Austria and Australia too had taken measures to evacuate their nationals from both Iran and Israel. Some of these countries have also shut down their diplomatic missions.