Ukraine Evacuates 160 More Citizens and 9 Moldovan Citizens From Gaza Strip in Past Day
Over the past day, Ukraine has evacuated 160 more of its citizens and nine citizens of Moldova from the Gaza Strip.
This was announced by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
"Over the past day and night, Ukraine has evacuated 160 more of its citizens and 9 citizens of Moldova from Gaza. This week, 203 Ukrainian citizens have already been rescued. Ukraine stands for the protection of civilian lives and cares about each of its citizens, no matter where they are," the President wrote.
Ukraine began evacuating its citizens from Israel on 14 October, when the first evacuation flight with 207 Ukrainian citizens on board departed Tel Aviv for Romania and successfully reached its destination, Bucharest, on 15 October.
Since then, several more evacuation flights have been organised from Israel. At the time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine confirmed the deaths of 13 Ukrainian citizens.
Currently, Ukraine continues to evacuate its citizens from the Gaza Strip. As of mid-October, three evacuation flights with Ukrainians on board were organised from Israel. A total of 436 Ukrainian citizens were evacuated as of 18 October. At that time, almost 300 more Ukrainian citizens were in the Gaza Strip and expressed a desire to evacuate.
The Embassy of Ukraine in Israel and the Embassy in Egypt, as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, have been working on this, but the process is very complicated, said Mykola Nahornyi, Ukraine's Ambassador to Egypt.
He noted that the issue of evacuation needs to be agreed upon with all parties, including the consent of the Egyptian side, the Israeli side and certain guarantees from Hamas.
Egypt requires that evacuees should not stay in the country for more than four days. This applies not only to Ukrainians, but to all evacuees from Gaza.
"It is 100% certain that Ukrainians will not stay in Egypt. Along with the submission of the lists, the embassy has committed itself that the Ukrainian side will guarantee the evacuation of its citizens from Egypt within 4 days," the diplomat said.
This is a requirement for all foreign embassies, including the US and EU embassies.