Ukraine obtains permit to evacuate 329 Ukrainian citizens from Gaza Strip

Ukraine has obtained a permit for the evacuation of 329 Ukrainian citizens from the Gaza Strip.

The relevant statement was made by Ambassador of Ukraine to the State of Israel Yevgen Korniychuk on the air of Svoboda.Ranok, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

“We have obtained a permit to evacuate a total of 329 citizens, but the situation is changing every minute. Perhaps, some people failed to get there physically and refused to evacuate – this also happens. It is worth noting that we had about 400 people on the previous list, but some of them remained in the north of Gaza, and now it is impossible to evacuate them,” Korniychuk told.

In his words, Ukraine provides logistical support and does not refuse requests from any state for assistance with evacuation efforts. In this regard, Korniychuk mentioned Hungarian, Swiss and Polish citizens.

According to the Ukrainian diplomat, the Israeli and Egyptian authorities barely made any amendments to the evacuation lists when approving them.

“The security service checked the list for people who might be linked to Hamas.  There were almost none, most likely, as our lists had remained 95% unchanged since we submitted them to the competent agencies. These are mostly women and children,” Korniychuk added.

The ambassador noted that none of the wounded Ukrainian citizens had crossed the border of the Gaza Strip so far. In his words, there were unverified reports from the community about killed and wounded Ukrainian citizens, but the latter are receiving aid on the territory of the Gaza Strip.

“Perhaps, we will be able to reach them in the next evacuation tranches. It seems we had two of such people on the list that we submitted for approval, but they did not arrive at the checkpoint,” Korniychuk explained.

A reminder that, over the past day, Ukraine has evacuated 160 Ukrainian citizens and nine Moldovan citizens from the Gaza Strip. A total of 203 Ukrainians have been rescued this week.