Yemen evacuation mission ends

Foreign Office says 100-150 Pakistanis still left in the country

ISLAMABAD: Some 1,019 Pakistanis have been evacuated from Yemen by plane, ship and road vehicles in the last ten days, the foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday.

The ministry statement pointed out that the evacuation had been carried out with the help of three special flights, an equal number of naval vessel missions and a land evacuation effort via neighboring Oman.

There are an estimated 100-150 Pakistanis still left in the country. Each of these has chosen to stay on. The emergency evacuation operation was wrapped up in April, 2015.

There were around 3,000 Pakistanis residing in Yemen before the current crisis. Some 1,200 Pakistanis remained in the country when an airstrike campaign by GCC coalition commenced on March 26, 2015. Over 900 of these registered with the embassy for immediate evacuation. They were mostly located in Sana’a, Al Hudeida, Aden and Mukalla.

In a well organised evacuation plan stranded Pakistanis were moved from Sana’a to “Al Hudeida” where the airport was still functional for onward airlift. On 29th March, over 500 Pakistanis were airlifted through a special PIA Boeing 747 flight.

Chinese assistance was enlisted and 186 Pakistanis were moved from Aden to nearby Djibouti on 2nd April 2015. A special PIA A310 flight then airlifted 186 on April 3, 2015 where arrangements were in place for their reception and onward travel.

PNS Aslat was directed to Mukalla to evacuate 148 Pakistanis stranded there. Around 30 foreign nationals, including eight Chinese, 11 Indians and some Europeans were also evacuated. The ship docked at Karachi on April 7.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 11^th, 2015.