CHENNAI: With refugees and workers fleeing Iraq increasing by the week, 36 of them landed up at Chennai on two different flights on Monday morning. They had all flown out of Basra and after splitting in transit at Abu Dhabi, 10 of them touched down in Mumbai, while 26 reached Delhi. “Most of them are from places closer to Chennai than Hyderabad, so they were flown here by the MEA team handling the extraction,” said a police official.
The group of welders, cutters, electricians and maintenance staff touched in the city on two Jet Airways flights 9W 821 and 9W 465 by 9.30 am.
As soon as they landed, the police and the State’s protocol officer sorted out their hometowns and charted their route home - 15 of them opted to take trains to Vijayawada and headed to Chennai Central railway station.