“As of this morning, it is already around 8,000 people who have left, both on commercial flights and as a result of evacuation through Oman and through Saudi Arabia,” Sikorski told private broadcaster Tok FM.
Foreign ministry spokesman Maciej Wewiór said on X that 8,064 people had returned to Poland on 44 flights by 9 a.m.
Sikorski said more evacuation flights were planned on Monday, with further operations possibly taking place on Wednesday under a European Union mechanism.
“At the beginning, the preference was for our citizens, but the EU mechanism encourages taking also other EU citizens,” he said.
The Operational Command of Poland's Armed Forces said two military aircraft took off from Warsaw after 6 a.m. on Monday to transport Polish citizens from the Middle East as part of the evacuation operation, with Muscat in Oman as their destination.
On Sunday, after another meeting of the coordination team on the Middle East, Sikorski said 7,160 Polish citizens had left the region, including 6,769 on commercial flights and 391 on government-organized ones.
He added that the largest number of stranded Poles had been in the United Arab Emirates, but commercial connections there were being restored and the UAE’s capacity had reached 80,000 people a day, meaning about 1,000 Polish citizens were returning home daily on commercial flights.
(jh/gs)
Source: PAP