Eduardo González
An Air Force A400 plane arrived in Madrid on Wednesday from Lebanon with 68 Spaniards and thirteen citizens of other nationalities on board, bringing to 348 the number of people evacuated by Spain from this country due to the military clashes between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite party-militia Hezbollah, according to the Ministry of Defense.
According to the Department headed by Margarita Robles – which carries out the evacuations in coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – the aircraft was carrying, specifically, 65 Spanish adults and three babies, who had boarded a few hours earlier in Beirut. An operation of 19 soldiers from the Army’s Wing 31, the Medical Aeroevacuation Unit and the Air Deployment Support Squadron (EADA) participated in the mission, she said.
During a press conference at the Ministry’s headquarters, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, reported on Wednesday that, since last week, “a total of 348 people” have left Lebanon on Spanish military aircraft, of which “almost 300” have Spanish nationality. The rest are foreign relatives, the vast majority Lebanese, “and foreigners of other nationalities”, such as Argentina, the United States, Italy, France, the United Kingdom and Venezuela, among others.
“We have evacuated nationals of other countries in the same way that other countries have evacuated Spanish nationals on their flights,” he explained. “Almost half of the Spanish colony,” specifically forty percent of the nearly one thousand Spaniards living in Lebanon, “have left the country,” he said.
Last Thursday, two aircraft from the Air and Space Force, an A330 and an A400, arrived at the Torrejón de Ardoz Air Base in Madrid, with more than 240 Spanish citizens who had asked to leave Lebanon because of the military escalation in the country due to the clashes between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite party-militia Hezbollah. After these two flights (which also carried nearly 40 Lebanese relatives of the evacuated Spaniards), both Albares and Foreign Affairs declared “the operation concluded,” but Margarita Robles had announced two days ago the possible sending of a total of three aircraft to repatriate up to 350 people, as has finally been confirmed.
