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Rabat – An Air Arabia flight landed today, February 15, carrying 99 Moroccan students from Ukraine Tangier’s Ibn Battuta airport.
Air Arabia scheduled the direct repatriation flight to ensure the return of Moroccan students back home amid Russian-Ukrainian political escalation.
The flight landed in Morocco at 9:15 a.m. local time, and Air Arabia has announced it will schedule more flights to help Moroccan students return home from Ukraine amid fears of Russian invasion.
On Saturday last week, the Moroccan embassy in Kyiv issued a communique urging citizens in Ukraine to return to Morocco amid reports of an imminent conflict between Kyiv and Moscow.
After the announcement, Air Arabia and Royal Air Maroc announced special repatriation flights.
Royal Air Maroc will also repatriate Moroccans from Ukraine through two flights.
Morocco also put in place two numbers for concerned students and citizens to contact the Moroccan embassy in Ukraine.
Sources who spoke to Morocco World News on the situation said that the embassy received almost 4,000 calls as of February 14.
About 250 of the calls were made through the two phone lines the embassy provided in its Saturday statement.
Caught up in the middle of the Russia-Ukraine standoff, many Moroccan students have expressed concerns, requesting their universities to shift to remote learning. “We take these concerns seriously and they have been under discussion. But for the time being, the students’ safety comes first,” the sources told MWN.
The situation appears to be relatively stable as reports suggested that Russia has begun to withdraw troops from Ukraine’s borders.
The Guardian reported today that Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that it will withdraw some of its troops from the border with Ukraine in a “possible de-escalation” move. “The size of the withdrawal remains unclear and may involve only a fraction of Russia’s forces at the Ukrainian border, which western officials estimate at more than 60% of the country’s ground forces,” reported the Guardian.
