9 hours ago
Bengal students to board Jordan bus to flee Israel
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Kolkata: As the Israel-Iran conflict enters the ninth day with no signs of a climbdown, sleepless and fear-stricken students from Bengal stuck in different cities of Israel are counting the days for their evacuation.
While the process is likely to start through Jordan on Sunday, those who couldn't make it to the first list of evacuees waited with bated breath.
On Sunday, heavily guarded buses will pick up the evacuees from a number of cities and head towards Jordan. Flights from Amman will bring them back to New Delhi.
Priyangana Deb, a resident of Kolkata, who is pursuing post-doctoral research at the Medicine and Health Science Faculty of Tel Aviv University, reached Israel a few months back.
As the attacks on Israel intensified, she felt unnerved after a point. Deb listed herself with the embassy for evacuation.
"Sirens are nothing new in Israel. But this time it was different. I could not sleep well at night and had to rush to the shelter rooms multiple times, even at night. Even when the sirens are not blaring, a fear of the unknown chases me. Brought up in Kolkata, we have never seen such a thing before," said Deb.
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"The Israel administration has a number of apps that send periodic notifications. Whenever there is a notification on the app, we have to rush to the shelter room," she added.
Despite safety measures, Deb is looking forward to going back home. "I want to go back home now. My family and kids are there in Kolkata. I need to breathe in a secure environment for a while," she said. Deb is constantly in touch with the embassy over the past few days.
Barrackpore resident Sayantan Maiti, who is pursuing research in surface chemistry of diamonds at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, is also waiting for his name to appear on the evacuee list. Maiti has been in Israel since Nov 2022 and witnessed the wars with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis. "This time, the situation is even more dangerous. Cities like Tel Aviv, Be'er Sheva, and Haifa have been hugely affected by missile hits.
However, social media has exaggerated it a lot," he said.
Maiti felt that iron domes were largely effective in warding off Iranian missiles. "We are still alive because of the Israeli defence system — iron domes and bomb shelters. Direct impacts of missiles are more in number this time as they are huge and more savage," he said.
