Navy despatches two warships to Maldives for evacuation

Tribune News Service
New Delhi, May 5

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Two Indian naval ships have set sail to bring back stranded Indians from Maldives, a small island country, some 900 km south of Kerala.

Another two ships could soon be sailing off to bring back people from countries around the Persian Gulf.

These are specialised warships including a landing platform dock (LPD) and three landing ship tanks large (LSTL’s).

These are hollow from inside allowing huge carrying capacity of relief material, rations, machines and hundreds of troops.

These ships do not need a landing berth near the coast to berth. These are equipped with hospital beds for doctors and medicines.

However, in this case the ships will be going to a port. Each such ship can ferry some 600 persons.

This is the first major ship-based evacuation since Op Rahat in March 2015 when a total of 3074, including 1291 foreign nationals, were evacuated from Yemen after Saudi Arabia launched air strikes against Iranian-allied Houthi rebels.

The operation to Maldives is named “Samudra Setu” — meaning “Sea Bridge”.

The INS Jalashwa, an LPD, and INS Magar, an LSTL, are presently en route to the port of Malè, to commence evacuation operations from May 8.

The Indian Mission at Maldives is preparing a list of Indian nationals to be evacuated by naval ships and will facilitate their embarkation after requisite medical screening.

A total of 1000 persons are planned to be evacuated during the first trip.

The ships have been suitably provisioned for the evacuation operation. The evacuated personnel would be provided the basic amenities and medical facilities during the sea-passage. The evacuated persons will be disembarked at Kochi, Kerala.

Sources said plans are for the other two LSTL’s, namely INS and INS Airavaat, to sail to the United Arab Emirates. The destination is still being finalised.

These LSTL’s are based along the east coast and far east (Andaman and Nicobar Islands). These have been diverted to set course westwards.

Meanwhile, at least 30 aircraft of the Indian Air Force along with 11 more ships of the Navy are on standby for deployment to various countries for evacuation, said the sources.

Earlier the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Monday said the evacuation of lakhs of Indians stranded abroad will begin from May 7 in a phased manner.