India ramps up efforts to evacuate Indian students from Sumy in eastern Ukraine

New Delhi: India on Saturday said its main focus now is to evacuate around 700 Indian students stranded in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy that has been witnessing bombings and airstrikes.

At a media briefing, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said India hopes to evacuate its citizens from Kharkiv and Pisochyn in the next few hours.

"Our main focus is now on evacuating Indian students from Sumy. We are exploring multiple options for their evacuation," he said.

Bagchi also reiterated India's call to Russia and Ukraine to go for a local ceasefire so that the Indians can be taken out of the conflict zones.

"Our challenge in the evacuation of the Indians from Sumy is ongoing shelling and violence and lack of transportation," Bagchi said.

Without elaborating, he said India is exploring multiple options for the evacuation of the students. 

"We are in touch with all concerned. The best option for us would be a ceasefire that allows our students to get out and we have been strongly pressing both the Russian and Ukrainian sides to allow this kind of a local ceasefire," he said.

Bagchi said the complete attention of India's evacuation efforts now is on getting the students out of Sumy safely.

"Pisochyn has been evacuated of all Indian citizens. The mission will continue to remain in touch with them through their journey. Their safety has always been our priority. Be Safe, Be Strong," the Indian embassy in Ukraine said.

The MEA spokesperson said almost all Indians have now left Kharkiv city.

"That's a very positive development. It was an area of considerable concern for last few days," he said.

Bagchi said under evacuation mission 'Operation Ganga', 63 flights have brought back over 13,300 Indians.

Out of these 63 flights, 15 flights landed in the last 24 hours bringing back around 2,900 citizens.

The spokesperson said 13 flights are scheduled for the next 24 hours to bring back Indians.

The MEA's control room, set up following the Russian attack on Ukraine, has attended to 12,214 calls and around 9,000 emails till Saturday afternoon.

Bagchi said as India is completing the evacuation process from areas with a high concentration of Indians, it will now look at areas where some Indians are still stuck.

(With inputs from PTI)