The European Union has begun helping member countries Italy, Austria and Slovakia repatriate their citizens stranded due to the war in the Middle East, the bloc's crisis management chief told AFP Tuesday. Commissioner Hadja Lahbib said the three countries were the first so far to ask Brussels to assist in funding flights from the region.
Under the EU's "civil protection mechanism" member states can get the bloc's executive to reimburse them for the bulk of the costs.
So far Slovakia has organised two flights in the coming day under the scheme, Austria has asked for space for 90 passengers and Italy is assessing how best to evacuate nationals, Lahbib said.
She said that more countries were expected to activate the mechanism in the coming days.
The US and Israeli attacks on Iran which began on Saturday, followed by Iranian counterattacks on Gulf states and Israel, have led the closure of the airspace of a number of countries.
That has caused the cancellation of at least 12,903 flights between Saturday and Monday, according to Cirium, an aviation data analysis firm, or about 40 percent of planned flights.
Some airlines on Tuesday resumed a limited number of scheduled flights -- but evacuation flights are still set to ferry more stranded passengers out of the region.
A number of EU states have already begun flying out their citizens without asking assistance from Brussels.
Lahbib estimated that there are a total of some 500,000 EU citizens in the Middle East -- but not all of those were expected to want to leave.
