CAIRO: Egyptian students returning from Ukraine via Poland arrived in their country on Saturday on board two Air Cairo planes.
Egypt’s government announced on Friday that it had sent two planes to Poland to return 177 Egyptian students.
Egypt’s Ambassador to Poland Hatem Taj El-Din said his embassy “has received hundreds of phone calls from Egyptian students stranded in Ukraine.”
He added: “The embassy is coordinating with the Polish side to facilitate the entry of stranded Egyptian students.” He said 500 Egyptians have arrived in Poland so far.
Mohamed Abdel-Aty, first secretary of the Egyptian Embassy in Ukraine, said the evacuation of Egyptians is taking place in a more disciplined manner than in the initial days of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
He added that coordination is underway with the Egyptian community and its leaders in various cities in Ukraine, as well as with the Ukrainian Supreme Authority for Emergency Management to determine safe paths and the presence of a police escort on buses moving to the border.
“There is a large number of the Egyptian community in Ukraine who managed to cross the borders,” said Abdel-Aty, adding that they “are being transported in cooperation with the Egyptian embassies in neighboring countries such as Romania, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.”
Egyptian embassies in countries neighboring Ukraine are trying “to find solutions to the problems facing … Egyptians in the eastern border cities, namely Kherson, Kharkiv and Sumy, and to find solutions to evacuate them,” he said, adding that these cities are located in a region where there is heavy fighting.
There are initiatives with the International Red Cross in eastern Ukraine to negotiate with Ukrainian and Russian authorities to find safe corridors to get Egyptians out of those three cities, Abdel-Aty said, adding that his embassy’s goal is to evacuate all Egyptians.
