Indians leave Lebanon, one killed

New Delhi: Two Air India flights carrying 607 Indians from violence-hit Lebanon are reaching Mumbai and Chennai on Friday night even as the Ministry of External Affairs confirmed the death of an Indian in the Beirut bombings.

"Of the two flights, the first flight is scheduled to reach Chennai directly with 342 passengers on board while the other flight will reach Mumbai directly," Overseas Indian Affairs Minister Vayalar Ravi said.

"Both flights have taken off and are expected to reach today late evening by 2200 hrs IST."

"The government is doing its best for the Indian citizens in the troubled region. The Indian envoys in Beirut and Cyprus are helping out those who want to return to India," Ravi said.

Of the 607 people who have boarded the flights, 441 are from Tamil Nadu, 55 from Delhi, 42 from Mumbai, 10 from Kerala, six from Punjab, two from Hyderabad, six people from Nepal and one from Kolkata.

Six Nepalese are also aboard one of the flights.

Meanwhile, Minister of State for External Affairs E Ahamed has confirmed an Indian casualty in the Lebanon crisis.

"The Indian embassy in Beirut has confirmed one casualty, Devesh Kumar Swain from Orissa, who died at the bombing (by Israeli planes) of a glass factory near the Syrian border on Wednesday," an official note from Ahamed's office said.

"His body was found on Thursday. The employers of Swain are in touch with his relatives," the note said.

In one of its largest-ever overseas civilian evacuation operations, named as 'Operation Sukoon', Indian Navy has sent four warships, the INS Mumbai, INS Betwa, INS Brahmaputra and auxiliary tanker INS Shakti, to transport the Indian citizens from the trouble-hit regions to the refugee camps in Larnaca, Cyprus.

The first of the four ships, INS Mumbai, which had docked at the Beirut port on Thursday, has already taken around 700 Indians to Larnaca in Cyprus, around 200 km from the Lebanon capital.

The four ships could carry a total of 1,000-1,200 people. There are an estimated 12,000 Indians living in Lebanon. Over 100 of them have already been evacuated overland to Syria's capital Damascus.

The Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs has opened a control room in New Delhi to deal with the situation. Its telephone numbers are 91-11-26874250, 24197972 and the fax number is 91-11-24197984.