Thirty-eight evacuees from Israel arrive in Belgrade

BELGRADE - The Government of the Republic of Serbia and the Serbian MFA have organised a safe evacuation of 38 people from Israel.

They arrived in Belgrade on a special Air Serbia flight from Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, on Thursday evening.

The group was mostly comprised of Serbians, but some of the people were foreign nationals.

Earlier, State Secretary at the Serbian MFA Damjan Jovic flew to Egypt to provide the necessary assistance to Serbian nationals during the emergency evacuation.

"Tonight, we carried out an evacuation of our nationals who happened to be in the State of Israel, first by land to the Egyptian border, and then to the Sharm El-Sheikh airport, where we took them over in collaboration with Air Serbia," Jovic said in Egypt.

He said that was a way for the government to show responsibility to its citizens, and noted that situations like these also indicated how important it was for Serbia to have a strong national airline it could rely on.

"The MFA continues efforts to evacuate all our nationals who want to leave either the State of Israel or the Islamic Republic of Iran, where the situation is even more difficult, and you can expect that, in the coming days, too, we will bring back home safely all our citizens who want to return to Serbia," Jovic said.