2 AI planes to evacuate 840 Indians from Cyprus tomorrow

New Delhi, July 23 (UNI) Air India (AI) is sending two Boeing 747-400s tomorrow morning to evacuate about 840 Indians from Larnaca in Cyprus after their evacuation from war-torn Lebanon, an AI spokesperson here today said.

The planes will leave between 0800 and 1000 hrs from Mumbai and come back sometime in the evening, the spokesperson said.

On Friday, the first batch of 602 Indian nationals were brought from Beirut by two Air India special flights to Chennai and Mumbai.

Most of the passengers, 341 in number, were from Tamil Nadu.

The other plane, carrying 261 evacuees, arrived in Mumbai and later came to Delhi. A total of 38 evacuees were from Mumbai and 88 from Delhi and neighbouring states.

In addition, seven Nepali nationals were also evacuated by India from Lebanon following a request by the Nepalese government.

Meanwhile, Israel today unleashed more air strikes on Lebanon and Hizbollah fired rockets at Haifa even as a senior UN official demanded a halt to the violence to allow aid to reach desperate civilians.

The 12-day war has cost 365 lives in Lebanon and killed 37 Israelis.

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