ISLAMABAD: 160 Pakistanis out of around 300 stranded in Syria are about to reach home from Aleppo on Monday (today).
Pakistani pilgrims were stranded after the Damascus airport’s runway was badly damaged by Israeli air strikes on Friday.
As a result, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) suspended its operations in the Syrian capital. However, following a request by retired Air Marshal Saeed Mohammad Khan, Pakistan’s ambassador to Syria, the airline arranged to send a special flight to bring back the pilgrims.
Every year thousands of Pakistani pilgrims visit Syria to pay homage at the shrine of Hazrat Zainab, the granddaughter of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), along with other family members and companions of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) who are buried. There.
According to a statement issued by the Central Secretariat of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the Pakistani embassy in Syria has made arrangements for transportation of stranded Pakistanis from Damascus to Aleppo.
PIA arranges special flights for evacuation; Remaining pilgrims will go to Iraq
The party has issued this statement ever since its president Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari is serving as foreign minister in Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s cabinet.
According to the instructions of Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, the embassy in Syria was in touch with all the pilgrims, about 300 in total, the statement said.
It said that on June 13 (today) 160 people were to travel to Pakistan by the PIA from the Aleppo airport, about 150 km from Damascus.
“Our embassy is making arrangements for the transportation of passengers from Damascus to Aleppo,” the statement said, adding that the remaining 140 pilgrims will travel to Iraq on their own.
Syria has been embroiled in a civil war since 2011 and Israel has so far carried out hundreds of airstrikes against it, targeting government troops and their allies. Before Friday’s attack, the war-ravaged country had rarely seen such a major flight disruption.
Meanwhile, speaking to Dawn, Syed Musa Raza, director of Karachi-based Al Haramain Travels, said: “My brother is there; We have spoken to Mr. Saeed, the Pakistani Ambassador to Syria, who assured us that all arrangements have been made to evacuate our people.”
He said the PIA flight to Sharjah would leave for Aleppo airport to bring back 160 passengers.
“All the pilgrims have been asked to assemble at Hazrat Zainab’s dargah at 5 am on Monday,” he said.
Mr Raza said buses would leave from Damascus for Aleppo with the pilgrims and would be accompanied by senior embassy officials.
Earlier, the PIA suspended its flights to Syria because Israeli airstrikes rendered the runway at Damascus airport unusable.
On Saturday, a spokesman for the national carrier said: “Both runways are unusable/out of service due to Israeli air strikes on Damascus airport”, so flight operations to Syria were suspended altogether.
However, the Pakistani envoy in Damascus wrote a letter to the chief executive officer of the PIA as well as the government, requesting them to make necessary arrangements to bring back Pakistani pilgrims from the Syrian city of Aleppo.
According to the spokesperson, special instructions were issued by Aviation Minister Khawaja Saad Rafiq, following which the airline had arranged for a flight to Syria on June 13 (today).
The spokesman said that in the first phase, the Pakistanis would be shifted from Damascus to Aleppo, from where a PIA plane would take them back home.
According to the Ministry of Aviation, all visitors/pilgrims will start reaching home on special flights within 24 hours.
–Additional reporting by Mohamed Asghari
Published in Dawn, June 13, 2022