Stay indoors for next 48 hours, avoid military sites: Indian embassy to its nationals in Iran
There are about 8,000 Indians in Iran, and the Embassy of India in Tehran has facilitated the movement of 1,862 Indian nationals from Iran to Armenia and Azerbaijan for onward travel to India, including 935 Indian students and 472 Indian fishermen.
With US President Donald Trump warning Iran that “a whole civilization will die” if it does not agree to a deal that includes reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the Indian embassy in Tehran Tuesday asked Indian nationals to stay indoors for the next 48 hours.
In the advisory, the embassy said, “Indian nationals who are still in Iran must stay where they are for the next 48 hours, avoiding all electric, military installations, and upper floors of multi-storey buildings, remaining indoors, and coordinating any highway movement strictly with the embassy.”
“Those in embassy-hired hotels should stay put indoors while maintaining regular contact with on-site embassy teams,” the embassy said, adding that “all are requested to monitor official updates closely”. It also put out some emergency phone numbers.
Later, in the evening, it put out another advisory where it said that “in view of the rapidly evolving situation in Iran, Indian nationals who are currently in Iran are advised to stay put where they are, shelter in place, and avoid further movements”.
“Any movement within Iran and to the border crossings of Iran may be considered only in close coordination with the Indian embassy in Tehran and after obtaining explicit guidance of the Embassy.”
Ever since February 28, when the war began, the Indian embassy has issued seven advisories.
Sources said members of the Indian community have been advised to stock up on food, water and essentials for the time being. Many of them have been moved out of Tehran to other locations in the past few weeks.
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There are around 8,000 Indians in Iran, and the embassy in Tehran has facilitated the movement of 1,862 Indian nationals from Iran to Armenia and Azerbaijan for onward travel to India, including 935 Indian students and 472 Indian fishermen.
According to Indian officials, all Indian seafarers in the region are safe and no incident involving Indian-flagged vessels has been reported in the past 24 hours. Eight Indian nationals, including three seafarers, have been killed since the start of the war.
Currently, 16 Indian-flagged vessels with 433 Indian seafarers remain in the western Persian Gulf region. Indian authorities have facilitated the safe repatriation of over 1,691 Indian seafarers so far, including 92 in the last 24 hours, from airports and various regional locations across the Gulf, officials said.
The Indian government has been in touch with all stakeholders in the region. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has spoken to Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi six times, and multiple times with Foreign Ministers of the Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Oman among others. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also been in touch with the leaders of Iran, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman among others — he has spoken at least twice with each one of them since the start of the war.
Shubhajit Roy, Diplomatic Editor at The Indian Express, has been a journalist for more than 25 years now. Roy joined The Indian Express in October 2003 and has been reporting on foreign affairs for more than 17 years now. Based in Delhi, he has also led the National government and political bureau at The Indian Express in Delhi — a team of reporters who cover the national government and politics for the newspaper. He has got the Ramnath Goenka Journalism award for Excellence in Journalism ‘2016. He got this award for his coverage of the Holey Bakery attack in Dhaka and its aftermath. He also got the IIMCAA Award for the Journalist of the Year, 2022, (Jury’s special mention) for his coverage of the fall of Kabul in August 2021 — he was one of the few Indian journalists in Kabul and the only mainstream newspaper to have covered the Taliban’s capture of power in mid-August, 2021. ... Read More