The Indian government had made evacuation arrangement for four Sri Lankan students from the violence-hit East Ukrainian city of Lugansk to Kyiv, a top official said in New Delhi.

They have been evacuated to Kiev by Indian diplomats, who had gone to Lugansk to arrange for the evacuation of approximately 1000 Indian students who were studying largely in the medical college there, Indian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said.

“We did receive requests from some of these countries to assist their nationals also while we were assisting Indian nationals to be evacuated from Lugansk to Kiev,” he told a media briefing on Friday (6).

He stated that 16 Maldivian students, 15 Bangladeshis, 8 Pakistanis, 4 Sri Lankan students, 3 from Nepal and two British nationals of Indian origin were among those evacuated with the assistance of the Ukrainian Government.

“All of them were assisted and they are now in Kiev and they will make their own arrangements to fly out of there. The Indian Mission will assist them even in that,” he said.

“This is a humanitarian gesture that our Mission worked on based on requests from some of the countries. After all they were all students. We had the capacity and we did assist them,” the spokesman said.

The Indian Ministry of External Affairs had issued an advisory several days ago urging all Indian students in Lugansk to leave.