Indian students evacuated from Ukraine's Sumy were seen smiling after boarding a special train on Wednesday, in pictures tweeted by the embassy which are certain to bring relief to tense families back home.
The last big group of about 600 Indians and 17 from other countries took the train from Ukraine's Poltava and are likely to catch a flight back home from Poland on Thursday.
The train will take the students to Lviv in western Ukraine, from where they will be taken to Poland in buses, Anshad Ali, a student coordinator told news agency PTI. The distance between Poltava and Lviv is around 888 km.
According to the government, the group evacuated from Sumy includes 580 students, 20 Indians on work permits and families.
"Thirteen from Bangladesh, one each from Nepal and Pakistan and two from Tunisia were evacuated along with 600 Indians," a senior government official told NDTV.
According to him, the operation from Sumy was a tedious exercise amid ferocious fighting.
"Twelve buses only rolled out after a humanitarian corridor from the city to Poltava was set up to evacuate citizens," he said.
The Indian nationals were taken from Sumy on Tuesday morning in a convoy of about 12 buses escorted by the International Committee of the Red Cross, Ukrainian authorities and Indian embassy officials to Poltava city, where Indian officials had been stationed for the past few days to coordinate their safe passage out of the conflict zone.
Asma Shafique from Pakistan who was evacuated along with Indians thanked Indian officers for all the help. Roshan Jha of Nepal also was very grateful for coming out alive from the warzone.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for helping Citizens from Bangladesh.
Covering hundreds of miles across Ukraine, using multiple means of transport, the students are being evacuated from the war-hit east European country after their two weeks of excruciating stay in Sumy.
The evacuation from Sumy involved the most delicate and challenging leg of the Indian government's 'Operation Ganga' to help thousands of stranded Indians leave Ukraine.
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