India to fly out Lankans from Lebanon

India and Sri Lanka are discussing modalities of using aircraft to fly out Lankans, writes PK Balachandran.

India and Sri Lanka are discussing the modalities of using Indian aircraft to fly out Sri Lankans stranded in war-torn Lebanon.

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It is learnt that India will not find this difficult in view of the fact that Indian aircraft are already bringing stranded Indians to Mumbai and Chennai.

It is not clear as to how many Sri Lankan refugees the Indians will airlift. But it likely to be more than a hundred.

Currently, there are about 500 Sri Lankans who are wanting to leave Lebanon, and three hundred others are in Damascus looked after by the INGOs Caritas and IOM.

There are about 80,000 Sri Lankan workers in Lebanon. But a substantial number of them (some put it as high as 50%) are illegal immigrants with no valid travel documents.

Many of these may not want to be repatriated. But those who want to be have to be provided with valid documents and brought home. This is being done, according to an official source in Colombo.

Some may want to stay on because the Israelis have been bombing only some parts of Lebanon. There is also hope that the operations may end soon.

But informed sources say that the crisis may not end that soon giving the single minded devotion with which the Israelis are going after the terror bases in Lebanon.

At any rate, they feel that the Sri Lankan government may have to think of a plan to evacuate on a large scale, and for they will have to get international or UN funding.

Sri Lanka has the aircraft, but not the funds to operate the flights.