A group of Russian citizens was evacuated from the Gaza Strip on Thursday and boarded busses to Cairo, the Russian Embassy in Egypt told TASS.
“A total of 84 Russians, as well as 28 citizens of former Soviet republics, including Kazakhstan and Ukraine, expressed their desire to leave the Palestinian coastal enclave,” the embassy said.
According to the embassy, buses with people that were accompanied by diplomats road across the Sinai Peninsula to Cairo, where two Russian planes waited to deliver them to Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport.
It’s the second round of evacuation of Russian nationals from the Gaza Strip since May 20, when President Vladimir Putin signed an order to carry it out. On May 26, 64 Russians were evacuated from Gaza by bus to a waiting plane in Egypt.
Putin’s decree ordered his government to “make provisions for the evacuation of citizens of the Russian Federation and citizens of the Commonwealth of Independent States who have expressed such a wish.”
The decree instructed Russia’s SVR spy agency, the Emergency Situations Ministry, and the Foreign Ministry to set specific evacuation timeframes. Russia’s cabinet was ordered to implement measures needed to carry out the voluntary evacuations.
The United Nations reported that some 75,000 foreign nationals have fled Gaza at the end of operation Guardians of the Walls.