A wide-body Nepal Airlines aircraft has left for Israel Thursday morning to bring Nepalis stranded there.
The Airbus A-330-200 (9N ALZ) flight with Foreign Minister NP Saud took off from the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) at four in the morning and is expected to return after nine in the night.
Spokesperson at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) Sewa Lamsal has said that the 274-seater plane will return with 254 Nepalis stranded there.
During a press conference on Wednesday Lamsal stated that there would be delay in bringing bodies of the 10 Nepali students killed in Saturday’s attack on Israel by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas pointing that the Israeli government had yet to hand over the bodies to the Nepali Embassy officials.
She revealed that 288 Nepalis currently in Israel had wished to return to Nepal and added that the plane would prioritize bringing Nepali students stranded there first.
The killed students were part of a group of 17 studying in Kibbutz Alumim, an area near the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel.
The students had gone to Israel from Far Western University to pursue agricultural studies under the Israel government’s “Learn and Earn” program a month ago.
According to MoFA, 4,500 Nepalis are currently working in Israel as caregivers and they are all safe. Similarly, 265 students are studying agriculture and other disciplines there.
