Four Indian tailors evacuated from Gaza

Gaza/Jerusalem: Four Indian tailors working in Gaza for the last two years have been evacuated unharmed with the help of the Representative Office of India (ROI) in Ramallah, a top UN official said. The four, Abdur Rehman from Lucknow, Anwar Hussein belonging to Mumbai, Kamil hailing from Badam Ganj and Rashid Ahmed of Bareilly were working for a Palestinian businessman. They left the strip yesterday, one of the bloodiest day in the 13 days of conflict that saw 97 Palestinians and 13 Israeli soldiers dead in one of the fiercest attack launched by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in recent years.

They had moved to Gaza two years ago from Qatar. The ROI was in constant touch with them since the beginning of Israeli offensive and coordinated their evacuation efforts with UN Access Coordination office in Gaza. They were received at the Erez crossing by the staff of the ROI, who helped them escape to Jordan through the Allenby crossing. The tailors would be leaving for India from Amman today. Pushkar Sharma, an Indian-American representative of the UN Access coordination office in Gaza, said that the Indians, along with a few other foreign nationals, crossed over through the Erez crossing around noon before the two-hour humanitarian ceasefire brokered by the Red Cross began.

Some more Indians, married to Palestinians or working at Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charities, have decided not to leave the coastal Strip because of personal or moral reasons. "The Indian mission in Palestine has been constantly in touch with us and extended all help which gives us a lot of strength", an Indian woman from Vishakhapatnam, married to a Palestinian and living in Khan Younis town of Gaza with her six children, told PTI