Photo : YONHAP News
An emergency flight carrying 322 South Koreans safely landed at Incheon International Airport after departing from Qatar amid the intensifying crisis in the Middle East.
The Qatar Airways passenger aircraft took off from Hamad International Airport in Doha at around 3:45 p.m. Monday, Korean Standard Time and landed in Incheon at around 12:20 a.m. Tuesday.
The flight that transported South Koreans on a short-term stay, as well as Korean residents in Qatar, was arranged after the Qatari government accepted such a request from Seoul as its airspace is currently limited to special Europe-bound flights.
Early Monday, a group of 203 South Koreans and three family members of different nationalities arrived in the country aboard a government-chartered plane after evacuating from the United Arab Emirates(UAE).
Seoul’s foreign ministry said approximately 18-thousand South Koreans remained in 14 countries in the Middle East as of Friday, of which around three-thousand-500 were short-term visitors stranded in the UAE and Qatar due to flight cancellations.