Flights carrying evacuees from Israel have arrived in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, authorities said on Tuesday, putting the two countries among the first to bring citizens home to flee the conflict between Iran and Israel.
Another Central European country, Poland, said on Tuesday that the evacuation of Poles from Israel was planned for Wednesday and Thursday.
Slovak authorities said the first evacuation flight with 73 people, including 25 Slovak tourists and five family members of Slovak diplomats working in Tel Aviv, had arrived in the capital, Bratislava, late on Monday.
Foreign Minister Juraj Blanar said Slovakia had also helped bring citizens of other countries to Europe, including 15 Poles, mainly children, 14 Czechs, nine Austrians, two Slovenians, and one citizen each of Estonia, Spain and Malaysia.
“Our partners are contacting us and we are preparing another flight on Tuesday, which should include citizens of the Slovak Republic, as well as citizens of the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Latvia, and France,” Blanar said.
Another Slovak plane brought 42 passengers of multiple nationalities to Bratislava from Larnaca, Cyprus, on Tuesday.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Slovakia had helped evacuate seven Hungarians.
Czech Defense Minister Jana Cernochova said that a flight with 66 people evacuated from Israel had landed near Prague.
Both Prague and Bratislava are contemplating sending further planes to the Middle East in the coming days.
Poland said on Monday that it was organizing the evacuation of around 200 of its citizens from Israel via Jordan.
On Tuesday, the Polish foreign ministry said it planned to use two planes from Egypt and Jordan for the evacuation, the first of which would take off on Wednesday.
“The plane from Sharm el-Sheikh will take off first, the one from Amman will take off second, most likely on Thursday morning,” said Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Henryka Moscicka-Dendys.
“We want to service this connection with a military plane, because we see that there are not as many people willing to evacuate as it might seem.”
The German embassy said its nationals in Israel must sit tight until the situation stabilizes. “As long as the airspace is closed and the land gateway is not secure enough, we unfortunately have no possibility to support you with your departure,” it says.
Additionally, Taiwan’s foreign ministry said it helped 14 Taiwanese leave Israel by bus for Jordan on Sunday and will help them travel onward.
The ministry is in touch with another nine Taiwanese currently in Iran and will assist them if they need help departing, it said in a statement Monday.
In Iran, some 120 people, including diplomats and their families, were evacuated via Turkmenistan, the country’s foreign ministry said. Many of those evacuated were from fellow Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, officials said.
Iran’s and Israel’s airspaces were closed after Israel launched a sweeping surprise assault it says is necessary to prevent its longtime adversary from getting any closer to building an atomic weapon. At the beginning of the campaign last Friday, it said the situation had become an immediate existential threat to the Jewish state.
Iran has been launched barrages of ballistic missiles at Israel in response, killing 24 people so far and wounding more than 500. Israeli strikes on Iran have killed at least 224 people, according to Iranian officials.