More than 330 Ukrainians await evacuation from Gaza Strip – ambassador

337 Ukrainians have signed up for evacuation from the Gaza Strip, but there are many more Ukrainian citizens in this region, about 500.

Source: Yevhen Korniichuk, the Ambassador of Ukraine to Israel, in an interview with Radio Liberty

Quote: "337 citizens of Ukraine agreed for evacuation today. And our representative in Palestine just reported that another family of six people is preparing documents. But I think that probably half a thousand of our citizens are there.

Not everyone agreed to leave. The situation is very complicated. Unfortunately, we are, like the embassy, completely powerless here, to do anything to help. Apart from forming these lists, delivering them to the Israeli and Egyptian sides for agreement, and faithfully waiting for the evacuation. We hope that one day, maybe even tomorrow, the Rafah checkpoint will be open to foreign nationals."

Details: Korniichuk added that in addition to evacuating citizens of Ukraine, the embassy is also helping to evacuate citizens of other countries from the Gaza Strip.

"We undertook to assist the Moldovans who applied. We already had such an experience in 2021. We then took out more than 20 citizens of Moldova. Now we are talking about 50 Bulgarians. We are coordinating with the Poles," the ambassador said.

Background: 

• The first evacuation flight with Ukrainian citizens took off from the Israeli capital Tel Aviv on 14 October. Some Ukrainians were outraged that they had to pay for evacuation flights.
• Earlier, Dmytro Lubinets, Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament) Commissioner for Human Rights, reported that the Ukrainian side is waiting for an opportunity to evacuate its citizens from the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border crossing point with Egypt. 

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