June 27, 2025
JAKARTA – Forty-nine people evacuated by Indonesian authorities from Middle Eastern countries affected by the armed conflict between Israel and Iran safely landed in Jakarta on Wednesday, with more evacuees expected to arrive in Indonesia in the coming days.
Wednesday’s entourage consisted of 48 Indonesians and one foreign national married to an Indonesian evacuated from Iran on Tuesday. They fled the country through a 16-hour land trip to neighboring Azerbaijan.
“The 49 evacuees flew in three separate commercial flights from Baku, Azerbaijan, and transited in Istanbul, Turkey, and Doha, Qatar, before arriving in Jakarta,” the Foreign Ministry’s citizen protection director, Judha Nugraha, said in a statement on Thursday.
In addition to 49 people from Iran, the ministry and the Indonesian Embassy in Muscat facilitated the return of three Indonesian nationals from northern Yemen, which is controlled by the Houthi armed group.
The Indonesian Embassy in Amman also helped two Indonesian nationals residing in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to return to Indonesia. The evacuees from Yemen and Israel also arrived in Jakarta on Wednesday.
Previously, 11 evacuees from Iran landed in Jakarta on Tuesday after flying from Baku through Turkey. It was initially planned to fly them through Qatar, but an Iranian missile attack against a Qatari base that houses United States forces prompted a closure of the airspace in the region.
Read also: Indonesia still on alert despite Iran-Israel ceasefire
A total of 97 people, comprising 93 Indonesian citizens, three embassy staffers and an Iranian national married to an Indonesian, were previously evacuated from Iran after Jakarta raised the alert status for its embassy in Tehran to the highest level last Friday.
The status raise, declared after heightened tensions between Iran and Israel marked by missile attacks against each other, prompted authorities to prepare evacuation plans for Indonesians out of the country.
The Foreign Ministry also announced that its embassies in Oman and Jordan also set the highest alert status for Yemen, Israel and Palestine.
According to the ministry’s records, at least 376 Indonesian citizens lived in Iran, most of whom were students residing in Qom, located around 140 kilometers south of Tehran. Meanwhile, there were at least 194 Indonesians in Israel when the conflict started.
The armed conflict between Iran and Israel escalated on June 13, when Israel launched a strike against Iranian targets. It prompted retaliatory airstrikes by Iran on Israeli territory.
The tension further escalated when the US launched an airstrike against an Iranian nuclear facility. But several days later, US President Donald Trump announced that he had negotiated a ceasefire between Iran and Israel.
While both countries threw accusations at each other that they had violated the deal and continued the strikes, Trump said on Wednesday that the ceasefire was going “very well”.