Awaiting overseas clearance to send rescue plane to Yemen: AI

National carrier Air India, which was to send an aircraft to Yemen for bringing back Indian nationals stranded there, said the flight to the strife-torn country did not go ahead today as clearances are awaited from overseas authorities.
"The aircraft for evacuating Indians stranded in Yemen will not take off today as we are still awaiting clearance from the authorities concerned," an Air India spokesperson said.
Arab coalition warplanes targeting the Iran-backed rebels bombed the runway of the international airport in the Yemeni capital of Sana'a yesterday, the first time since the campaign began.
"We have stationed two aircraft in (Oman's) Muscat to ferry the Indian citizens from Yemen. As soon as the permission comes, we will operate these aircraft," the spokesperson said.

Earlier, in the morning, the airline had said that the 180-seater Airbus A320 aircraft, which took off from Delhi at 7:45 A.M for Sana'a via Muscat, was likely to return from Yemen in the evening.
The government had yesterday decided to evacuate its Indian nationals from the Gulf country.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had yesterday said that India has got permission to fly from Sana'a for three hours a day.
Swaraj tweeted that the country was in the process of sending a ship with a capacity to carry 1,500 passengers.
The ministry has also set up a 24-hour control room to monitor the situation in Yemen, where all the airports have been shut down.

There are about 3,500 Indians, most of them nurses, in various provinces of Yemen, including in Sana'a.