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Planes evacuating Russians fleeing Gaza depart from Cairo

They have a total of 112 people on board, including 84 Russians

© Ruslan Suleimanov/TASS

CAIRO, June 11. /TASS/. Two Russian emergencies ministry planes, carrying 112 people fleeing the Gaza Strip via Egypt, departed from Cairo early on Friday, a TASS correspondent reported from the airport.

The Il-76 and An-148 planes departed one after the other at approximately 03:40 local time (04:40 Moscow time). They arrived to the Egyptian capital about five hours earlier. They have a total of 112 people on board, including 84 Russians, as well as citizens of Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

The planes are expected to land at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport approximately four hours later.

It will be the second evacuation of Russians and citizens of other CIS countries since Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a relevant decree on May 20.

On May 26, a total of 64 Russian citizens were evacuated from the coastal enclave via Egypt. The evacuees crossed the Israeli-Gaza border via the Rafah crossing, where they were met by Russian diplomats. They were taken to Cairo by buses and flown to Moscow by a Russian emergencies ministry plane.

The Egypt-brokered ceasefire in the Gaza Strip came into force overnight to May 21, after eleven days of missile strikes. Radical Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli army began to exchange bombardments on May 10, following unrest near the Al Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem, triggered by an Israeli court ruling to confiscate homes from several Arab families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

The radicals fired more than 4,000 rockets at the territory of the Jewish state. In retaliation the Israeli military bombed hundreds of targets in the enclave. The hostilities left 256 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.

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