Sat, Oct 14th 2023
According to its own statement, the FDFA has been receiving significantly fewer enquiries on its helpline in connection with the situation in Israel since Wednesday. The number of travellers registered on “Travel Admin” has also fallen sharply in recent days.
The Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) informed the Keystone-SDA news agency on Saturday that around 300 people were still registered on the federal travel app. On Thursday, there were almost twice as many travellers, 550.
The four evacuation flights operated by Swiss on behalf of the Department from Tuesday to Friday alone brought 880 people to Zurich, according to the FDFA.
In addition, the FDFA wrote that it knew of travellers who had returned home to Switzerland on their own. However, no reliable information was available on the exact number of such departures from Israel.
Originally, Swiss and the FDFA had planned to operate two more special flights from Tel Aviv to Zurich on Saturday. However, the airline cancelled the flights at short notice on Friday – and announced that there would be no more evacuation flights until further notice. The airline cited safety concerns as the reason for the decision.
Also on Friday afternoon, Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis confirmed at a media conference that one of the victims of the Hamas attacks on Israel was a Swiss-Israeli dual citizen. The FDFA said on Saturday that it had not yet received any information about other Swiss nationals who had been killed or injured.
©Keystone/SDA
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