Sudan conflict: 9 more Tamils arrive in Chennai; 96 back home so far

CHENNAI: Nine more Tamil natives have arrived home from the war-torn Sudan after a brief stay over at New Delhi.

The latest batch arrived at the IndiGo Airlines flight at 1 am on Saturday.

The repatriates were accorded a warm welcome by TN Minister of Minorities and Non Resident Tamils Welfare Gingee Masthan at the Chennai airport.

The Indians are flown to New Delhi following which the Tamils are taken to Tamil Nadu House by the officials. Subsequently, their flight ticket expense to TN is borne by the State government.

The latest batch of repatriates are identified as Palanisamy Ayyadurai, Sarathkumar Srinivasan, Venkatesan Muthusamy, Nithilan Venkatesan, Deepa Venkatesan, Thavaseelan Aanaimuthu, Piraisoodan Dinesh, Kaviyarasi Dharmalingam, Dinesh Govindharaj. Those who belonged to other districts were sent in the vehicles arranged by the State vehicles.

The minister briefed the presspersons that, "96 Tamils in total have reached home so far and the government has arranged vehicles for people from remote places in the State."

India has launched a rescue operation "Operation Kaveri" to bring Indians back from Sudan, where conflict broke between the army and paramilitary force in pursuit of power following the topple of Omar-Al Bashir's regime in a coup d'état in 2019. The latest update from Sudan is concerning as airstrikes are being reported despite announcement of mutual truce.