Governments send flights to evacuate stranded citizens in Middle East

Governments are sending special flights to rescue several travellers and citizens stranded in the Middle East war.

The situation remains dangerous in the region, with Qatar saying it had blocked Iranian attacks on its airport, one of the major hubs in the region.

The US and Israeli attacks on Iran which began on Saturday, followed by Iranian counterattacks on Gulf states and Israel, have prompted several countries to shut their airspace.

At least 12,903 flights were cancelled between Saturday and Monday, representing 40 percent of planned flights, according to aviation data analysis firm Cirium.

Several countries have organised evacuation flights to repatriate their nationals.

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Two evacuation flights with 200 passengers each landed in the Czech capital Prague on Tuesday morning.

On Sunday, nearly all flights were cancelled out of the United Arab Emirates, home to Dubai airport, the second-largest in the world in terms of passengers.

The cancellation rate fell to 93.5 percent on Monday after Dubai — and Abu Dhabi’s airport — resumed limited operations.

Some Emirates flights took off Tuesday morning, according to the Flightradar24 flight tracking website, flying south out of the Gulf region. Low-cost flydubai and Russia’s Aeroflot were also said to be operating.

Flights continued to come in and out of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Oman, though no civilian flights passed through airspace over Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Libya or Qatar.

Israel said its airspace would gradually reopen from Wednesday night, initially just for flights repatriating nationals.

European countries including the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania were quick to organise an airlift of their countrymen.

Hundreds of passengers landed back in Prague on two planes on Tuesday morning, with around 100 Slovaks arriving and more than 300 Romanians returning via Egypt.

Italians were set to arrive in Rome and Milan on three flights.

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Russia said it had picked up nationals who had fled from Iran to Azerbaijan, as well as a few dozen who were in Egypt.

The United States said it was helping to arrange charter flights from Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — adding that more than 9,000 people had already made it back from the region since Saturday.

France is among the most affected Western nations, with an estimated 400,000 nationals in the region.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday two flights were on their way to Paris with the first groups to be repatriated.

Other European countries were following suit.

Germany said a charter flight would leave Oman on Wednesday with some of the estimated 30,000 Germans stranded in the region, and travel firm TUI started to fly home holidaymakers stranded on two of its cruise ships in the Gulf via Dubai.