Yemen crisis: Sushma Swaraj responds to SOS on Twitter, help on its way

Welcome home baby and @SabahShawesh

— Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) April 5, 2015

Sabah Sawesh had reached out to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Twitter on March 31, and had identified herself as PIO card holder. Her husband is an Indian national. “My baby is Indian & has right as Indian to be evacuated from Yemen but cant walk himself as 8 months. I need to accompany him [sic],” she had pleaded. The External Affairs Minister had then asked for her contact details.

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Over the next few days, the Indian embassy in Sanaa verified her details and was preparing to evacuate them Sunday.

Sabah, whose Facebook says she has a degree from Manipal University, wrote, “Waiting evacuation flight 2 India. Waiting might take time as everyone rushing for life. Cant rush with little baby. Have to wait and wait [sic].”

She had tweeted on April 3: “Hugging my baby & closing his ears is how I sleep everynight under heavy bombings in Sanaa Cant hope for anything than reaching India safe… Feeling so scared and so unsure of anything!! [sic]”

She is one of the 1,500 people who are yet to be evacuated from Yemen. So, far over 2,300 Indians and some foreign nationals have been evacuated in the last one week.

India on Sunday evacuated 670 more nationals, including 488 from Sanaa by three Air India flights, taking the total number of Indians rescued from war-ravaged Yemen to nearly 2,300 after the “largest” evacuation in a day so far from there.

Earlier, Swaraj also tweeted that in a humanitarian gesture India evacuated three Pakistani nationals from Al Hodeida by INS Sumitra.