106 evacuees from Sanaa land in Kochi

From the first batch of stranded Indians evacuated from the strife-torn Yemen's capital city Sanaa to Djibouti in two sorties flown by Air India on Friday, 106 people arrived here at 12:30 am yesterday.

They were ferried by an Air India 777 aircraft from Djibouti.

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The group comprised 78 people from Kerala, 22 from Tamil Nadu, three from Andhra Pradesh, two from Karnataka and a man from Uttar Pradesh. The rest of the 330 evacuees on the plane continued their onward journey to Mumbai, where they landed a few hours later.

Since there was lingering ambiguity over the identity of the evacuees flown in to Kochi, just a few of them had their relatives waiting outside the airport in the hope that their dear ones would have made it to the flight. But there were also the likes of Ranjan, a resident of Changanassery, who had come with the whole family to receive his sisters, evacuated and brought to Djibouti at Friday noon from Al-Hodeidah, only to realise later that they had landed in Mumbai on the rescue flights flown by the Air Force.

Nearly 30 of those who arrived at Kochi yesterday were nurses from the Al-Thawra Modern General Hospital, a big 900-bed multispecialty hospital in the heart of Sana'a where 500-odd Malayali nurses are said to be still struck.