Balkan Countries Evacuate Citizens As Egypt Unrest Continues

Some 63 Bulgarians arrived back in Sofia on Tuesday night on a government plane, along with three Russian citizens.

Meanwhile, Bulgarian tour operators have begun to organise charter flights to bring back the Bulgarian tourists currently on vacation in Egyptian resorts. Early Tuesday morning a charter flight brought home 90 Bulgarian tourists from Hyrgada.

In addition, three Bulgarians were evacuated by Greece from the northern city of Alexandria and brought to Athens.

The total number of Bulgarian citizens residing in Egypt is estimated at between 200 and 300, but Sofia is evacuating only those who wish to leave the country.   

Protests against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak have raged in Cairo and other cities in the country over the past week, and hundreds of people have been killed in the unrest. Countries throughout the world have begun evacuating citizens and embassy workers as the protests continue without any clear end in sight.

Serbia has also been carrying out evacuation flights, with planes from the country's flagship carrier, JAT, landing in Belgrade with both tourists and Serbian citizens who live and work in Egypt onboard, as well as embassy workers.

120 Serbian tourists from Sharm El Sheikh and Hurghada landed on Monday evening in Belgrade, and Serbian Ambassador to Cairo Dejan Vasiljevic said that after the departure of the group from the two resorts, no Serbian tourists remain in Egypt.

Meanwhile, Bosnia has been arranging the evacuation of its citizens with the help of Istanbul, which flew a group of 24 students from Sarajevo out of Egypt on Monday night. The students, who were taking part in an exchange programme with Egypt, were in Luxor. They were taken to the Turkish capital, where they waited for transport back to Sarajevo.

Bosnia's Foreign Ministry has said more than 100 of its citizens are still waiting to be flown out of Egypt, and the Bosnian Embassy in Cairo is trying to organise their evacuation.

The Macedonian embassy in Cairo said that 34 citizens initially asked to be evacuated, but only 12 people are expected to return on the flights organised by the government after learning that they would have to pay for a ticket. Most of the Macedonians who have chosen to stay in Egypt are university students.

Twenty Albanian police officers who were in Egypt on a training mission were evacuated by the Albanian government on Tuesday, along with some 80 civilians.

The Romanian Embassy in Cairo has said that it has not received any official requests for evacuation, though it had fielded some 300 phone calls from Romanian citizens in Egypt asking about the type of help they would receive in case of emergency.