PolicyDiplomacy
About 3,000 stranded Umrah pilgrims back from Saudi Arabia in a week, MEA says
The foreign ministry said it was working with airlines and tour operators to bring the rest home, and that India was still getting life-saving medicines to Iran despite disrupted flights.
Key points
- About 3,000 stranded Umrah travellers have returned from Saudi Arabia over the past seven days.
- More than 10,000 regular Umrah pilgrims booked on available flights have also come home.
- India continues to send life-saving medicines to Iran though the war has hit flight links.
About 3,000 Indian Umrah pilgrims who had been stranded in Saudi Arabia by the widening war in the Gulf have returned home over the past week, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Friday.
Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told his weekly briefing in New Delhi that more than 10,000 regular Umrah pilgrims who were booked on the flights still running had also come back. The Indian Embassy in Riyadh and the Consulate in Jeddah “remain actively engaged with concerned airlines and tour operators”, he said, and arrangements were being discussed for the pilgrims still waiting.
Embassy and consulate staff were in touch with those stranded and were working with community volunteers to support them, Jaiswal said. Control rooms in Riyadh and Jeddah are running round the clock, and the missions are issuing regular advisories.
Flights still cut
Air links remain thin. The embassy in Riyadh said earlier on Friday that IndiGo flights to and from Riyadh “will remain cancelled until 31 October 2026 (inclusive)”, and that its flights to Jeddah, Dammam and Madinah are cancelled until 27 October.
Last week Rajya Sabha MP Mansoor Ali Khan wrote to External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Minority Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju, saying some private tour operators had run out of money and left pilgrims at risk of overstaying their visas.
India has condemned the attacks on Saudi civilian and energy sites on 21 October, at King Fahd International Airport in Dammam and at Saudi Aramco’s Shaybah oil field. One Indian was killed and two were injured at the Dammam airport, and another Indian was hurt at Shaybah. India said it stands “in solidarity with the people and the Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia”.
Medicines for Iran
Jaiswal also said India was still getting essential medicines to Iran. “We have and continue to facilitate transport of life-saving medicines to Iran,” he said, describing it as a humanitarian gesture. The conflict, he said, “has posed new challenges to the flight connectivity between our two countries”, and Indian officials were in touch with their Iranian counterparts to make sure the supplies got through.
Asked about reports that India had refused Iranian aircraft the use of its airspace, he did not confirm them.
Contacts with Tehran have continued at a senior level. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh met Iran’s First Vice President, Mohammad Reza Aref, on Tuesday on the sidelines of the SCO Heads of Government meeting in Dushanbe. On 12 October, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval spoke to Mohsen Rezaei, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, and raised the safety of Indian seafarers and tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.