Exactly a month after 46 Indian nurses were evacuated from the strife-torn Iraq by the Ministry of External Affairs, 47 nurses returned home from troubled Libya on Tuesday.
While 44 nurses arrived this morning at the Kochi airport, three got off in New Delhi. They were among the more than 500 nurses from Kerala working in Tripoli, capital of Libya, and Bengahzi, another Libyan town.
The nurses had informed Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy that they wanted to get out of the embattled country.
The return of the nurses was facilitated by the Ministry of External Affairs and the Non-Resident Keralites Affairs Department of Kerala (Norka). They were first taken by bus to Tunisia, from where they were airlifted to Kochi via Delhi.
Oommen Chandy has urged Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj to arrange two special flights from Malta and Tunisia to airlift the nurses working in Libya.
Exactly a month ago, on July 5, 46 Indian nurses were evacuated from Iraq. The hospital they had been working for had been partially bombed by anti-government forces before the rebels themselves had taken them to a safe place.
In the past one month, scores of Kerala nurses have returned from Iraq. Many have got job offers from hospitals run by Keralites in the Gulf region.