Leave Sana'a? No Way!

While the government continues to evacuate Indians from Yemen, several of them chose to remain in the West Asian country despite the ongoing conflict. A rescue worker present in Yemen said that such Indian citizens opted to remain in Yemen due to abject poverty back in India.

Some of the Indians preferred to stay back in Yemen's capital Sana'a as well as other places in the country. "Some have moved out to several locations in Yemen where the conflict has scaled up massively and a few have also sought refuge here in Djibouti," he said, adding, "The Indians who do not want to return are very poor and they work in Yemen just to pay large debts. They have nothing to come back home to other than poverty."

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) is conducting the operations on the ground from the Republic of Djibouti. Units of the Indian Air Force, the Indian Navy and civil agencies such as Air India and shipping authorities are part of the evacuation operations. MEA spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said that in many cases there were Indians married to Yemen nationals and also many who could not return due to "health and job conditions". "It is a call that they will have to take. We can only know that in the end, once the evacuation operation is complete," Akbaruddin said.

Union minister for external affairs, Sushma Swaraj tweeted on Monday that 23 countries had requested India to evacuate their citizens as well. Official sources confirmed that India has also evacuated citizens of Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, other Asian countries, North American and European countries from Yemen.

There are approximately 4,000 Indians in Yemen as per government estimates and the government reportedly made three announcements between January 21 and March 22 for them to leave the conflict-struck country. The first advisory was sent a day after Houthi rebels laid siege to the presidential palace in Sana'a, forcing the Yemenian president and prime minister to resign within the next two days. The Houthi insurgents have reportedly taken over military and government sites in the country. The Al Qaeda Arab Peninsula (AQAP) and Saudi Arabia have joined in the retaliation to the Houthi coup.

This is the fourth such evacuation by India in less than a year; the previous three being in Libya, Ukraine and Iraq. A local ship was used for the first rescue operation by sea that evacuated 400 people from Aden on March 30.

On Saturday, April 4, 2015, the airport was shut for a while due to gunfire in the city, which led to fears of being stranded amongst the Indian citizens. MEA resorted to using three Navy vessels, INS Mumbai, INS Tarkash and INS Sumitra, to sail the stranded Indians from Aden, Hudeida and Mukalla in Yemen across the Gulf of Aden to Djibouti, according to a government official. INS Mumbai was anchored in the Gulf of Aden outside the port due to firing in the city.

Of the estimated 4,000 Indians in Yemen, MEA has flown an estimated 1,200 Indians from Sana's to Djibouti till early on Monday, April 6, 2015 using Indian Airlines' Airbus 320 and 321 airplanes and IAF's C-17s. By the morning of Monday, April 6, 2015, an estimated more than 2,300 Indians had been evacuated out of Djibouti using Air India's Boeing 777 airplanes. General VK Singh has also been to Sana'a several times to supervise evacuation efforts.