Aviation analytics company Cirium said that of the more than 36,000 flights scheduled to fly to or from the Middle East, more than 20,000 had been cancelled since Saturday.

As airlines resumed limited flights out of hubs including Dubai and Riyadh, governments also chartered planes to bring home citizens affected by the turmoil, which stranded tens of thousands of travellers worldwide.

Passengers touching down at airports in Australia, France, Germany, India, Russia, Taiwan and beyond told of sleepless nights and days-long ordeals to get out of the Middle East when war erupted.

Max Lin, a student from Taiwan, was riding a motorcycle on the beach during a long layover in Dubai when he got the news that upended his trip on Saturday, the day the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran.

"My friend messaged me asking if anything had happened where I was," he said.

"I looked it up and realised there seemed to be a war, so my flight that night was cancelled," he told AFP after disembarking from the first direct Emirates flight from Dubai to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport since the conflict began.

Fanny Wu, who had travelled to Dubai with her two children, said bombs were "going off right next to us" as the air strikes began.

"Although Taiwan has always been close to war, we had never experienced anything like this," she said.

- Evacuations -

A Russian emergency services flight evacuated 117 citizens, including 54 children, from Azerbaijan after they left Iran overland across the border.

France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the United States also organised special evacuation flights, from countries including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Passenger Emmy Coutelier, 18, hugged her sister at Charles de Gaulle airport after touching down in Paris from the UAE.

When the first strikes hit Dubai, she was in a hotel swimming pool with her boyfriend, she recounted.

"We never thought this would happen," she told AFP.

"An alarm sounded in the middle of the night telling us not to stay near the windows," she said.

"We went down to the basement," she added. When Coutelier boarded the repatriation flight, she said she felt as if she were "fleeing danger, even though it's a relatively safe country".

France said it would organise further evacuation flights, but government minister Eleonore Caroit called it "a complex process, with constant uncertainty because we are in a very fluid situation".

An evacuation flight from Abu Dhabi repatriated 175 passengers to the Spanish capital Madrid.

Carolina Garcia, a student, recounted going through "a lot of anxiety".

"And exhaustion," added her friend Adriana Mecia. "A lot of exhaustion. We hadn't slept for about three days."

The United States said more than 9,000 Americans had returned from the region since Saturday, including more than 300 from Israel.

The State Department urged Americans in all of the Middle East from Egypt eastward to leave for their own safety.

- Israel reopening airspace -

As of Wednesday, Cirium data indicated that air traffic was virtually completely grounded in Qatar and Bahrain. In Israel, nearly three-quarters of flights were cancelled and just over two-thirds in the UAE.

Israel's transport minister said the country would gradually reopen its airspace overnight between Wednesday and Thursday, "subject to security developments".

The initial flights will be to repatriate Israelis, a transport ministry spokesperson told AFP, saying there would be no departures for now.

The reopening had initially been scheduled for next week, but was moved up "following security assessments with professional and security experts," said Transport Minister Miri Regev.

Sharon Kedmi, director general of the Israel Airports Authority, told reporters the re-opening will begin "very cautiously, with one aircraft per hour during the first 24 hours -- a narrow-body aircraft".

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