As the air raid sirens started to wail and the sky of several cities in Iran was lit up by anti-aircraft fire and explosions, early Saturday, thousands of Indian students who were stuck in the country got panicked. After a significant escalation in which coordinated U.S. and Israeli airstrikes hit military sites across Iran, the student community’s wave of desperate and urgent pleas for evacuation has started to flow.
For the approximately 4,000 to 5,000 Indian students who are in Iran for their higher studies and the majority of them being medical students in such cities as Tehran, Shiraz, and Isfahan. The war has suddenly changed their campuses from places of education into places of terror.
Indian Citizens in Terror
“We haven’t slept since the attacks started,” said Aarti Sharma, a third-year medical student at the Tehran University of Medical Sciences, speaking by phone with her voice trembling. “The sounds were deafening. The whole dormitory building was shaking. We were told these were surgical strikes on military sites, but when you hear the jets and the blasts so close, you don’t feel safe anywhere. We just want to go home. We are stuck inside our hostels. Classes are suspended, shops are closed, and there’s a general sense of dread on the streets. We are appealing to Prime Minister Modi and the Ministry of External Affairs to get us out of here before the situation gets worse.”
Social media has been packed with the student community’s similar posts, many of them sharing videos shot from their windows showing flashes of light in the distance and hearing the sounds of explosions. WhatsApp groups created for sharing study materials are now full of scared check-ins and frantic speculations about possible routes for escape.
The Escalation
The students’ misery is only part of the story of the whole region that is suffering from a drastic worsening of the conflict. In the early hours of February 28, the United States and Israel launched a series of coordinated “precision strikes” targeted the military infrastructure of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), drone manufacturing facilities and missile launch sites. The joint operation which the officials described as a retaliation to recent provocations is a very significant and dangerous step forward in the well-known conflict.
According to the reports, the strikes targeted only military installations but the fact that some of these places are very close to the civilian areas of the major cities has caused a huge wave of the feeling of being exposed to the civilians.
Appeals & Official Response
Representatives of the students have been desperately trying to get in touch with the Indian Embassy in Tehran to figure out if there is any evacuation plan. Many are thinking of Operation Ganga, the efficient evacuation of Indian students from Ukraine in 2022, and are expecting the government to answer their request just as quickly.
The Indian Embassy in Tehran upon the escalation of tensions earlier in the week has been issuing advisories regularly. In an update on Saturday morning, the mission strongly advised all Indian nationals to “exercise extreme precaution“, “limit their movements ” and “avoid areas that could become scenes of confrontations” They have also provided 24-hour emergency helplines.
MEA sources said that the government remains “closely engaged with the rapidly changing situation” and the line of communication with the embassy in Tehran is always open. Although there is no evacuation plan publicly disclosed so far, officials are said to be looking at different scenarios, including the use of land routes through neighbouring countries, if the Iranian airspace is not available or unsafe for civilian flights.
For now, thousands of Young Indians are still confined to their hostels waiting anxiously for a text message which will inform them of the safe travel arrangements back to India as their eyes are fixed on the news and hold their phones tightly.
