Kurdistan brings home another 133 students stranded in Armenia since COVID-19 outbreaks began

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Region’s Department of Foreign Relations (DFR) on Friday announced the repatriation of 133 students that had been stuck in Armenia for months due to the suspension of flights and other travel restrictions imposed outbreaks of the coronavirus began to appear across the world in recent months.

This is the second such flight in less than a week organized by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to evacuate its citizens from Armenia. In a similar flight on Wednesday, 89 students and two additional Kurdish citizens were brought back to their home country in a specially organized flight.

Read More: Kurdistan repatriates 91 students, others who had been stuck in Armenia

A DFR press release on Friday noted that the process that culminated in the students arriving at Erbil International Airport that day was carried out in coordination between the KRG and the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs. An earlier statement about last week's flight also thanked the Armenian government for its facilitation. 

Every student will be held in quarantine for 14 days as part of health regulations to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

On April 17, another 270 citizens who had been stranded in the UK and Germany arrived in Erbil.

Read More: KRG repatriates 270 citizens from Germany, UK amid COVID-19 crisis

Earlier that day, the Iraqi Civil Aviation Agency announced that its current suspension of commercial flights to and from all Iraqi airports, including the Kurdistan Region, would continue until April 24th to curb the spread of coronavirus.

Read More: Iraq extends suspension of commercial flights until April 18

The Civil Aviation Agency’s decision of flight suspension was first made on March 17 and was planned to last for a week until March 24 as the government began to take preventive measures to block the disease from spreading further and has been extended several times afterwards.

According to the latest figures from the KRG’s health ministry, there have been 344 confirmed coronavirus cases since outbreaks in the Kurdistan Region, including 317 recoveries, and four deaths.

Editing by John J. Catherine