Over 4,000 Swiss travellers stranded amid conflict in Middle East

The vast majority of the stranded Swiss travellers are in the United Arab Emirates, according to the foreign ministry. Keystone-SDA

Over 4,000 travellers from Switzerland are currently stranded in the Middle East, the foreign ministry said on Monday. So far the ministry has ruled out repatriation assistance.

Because several countries have closed their airspace, the Swiss foreign ministry told the press that it had yet to find a concrete solution for assisting the stranded travellers. The ministry is in contact with both the airline SWISS and the crisis cells of partner countries to examine options, said Marianne Jenni, the top consular official at the ministry, during a press conference on Monday.

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“I hope that Swiss travellers will be able to return via commercial flights once the airspace reopens,” she said.

Around 4,000 people from Switzerland are registered as being stranded in the region on the ministry’s Travel Admin app, which tracks travellers in need of support. The vast majority of them are in the United Arab Emirates. The ministry currently has no information about any Swiss casualties resulting from the deepening crisis in the region.

More than 1,000 people have contacted the helpline set up by the ministry since the situation in the Middle East escalated on Saturday.

Fears of a scenario similar to Iraq

Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis, speaking on the sidelines of an event in western Switzerland, expressed the government’s condolences to the victims of the strikes and counter-strikes in the region.

Cassis said he feared a situation similar to that in Iraq 30 years ago was about to unfold. “I don’t believe that military action can put everything in order,” he said, just a few days after talks between Washington and Tehran were held in Geneva.

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Progress had been made during those discussions, the minister said. But they did not satisfy the United States, which took the decision to carry out an operation against Iran.

The attack, carried out jointly with Israel on Saturday night, resulted in the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Iran retaliated by launching strikes on most of the Gulf monarchies, raising fears of a major conflict in the region.

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Translated from German and French with AI/gw

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