The efforts of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE)continue in the consular area to provide assistance to Romanian citizens in areas affected by the ongoing security crisis in the Middle East, MAE spokesman Andrei Tarnea said on Friday.

The statements were made at a briefing on the ongoing crisis in the Middle East as military attacks in the region were still raging on.

'Military attacks continue in the region. (...) There are a number of diplomatic developments. The situation remains unpredictable and the duration as well as the security prospects ; returning to normal remains unpredictable. Consequently, our efforts continue in the consular area for the Romanian citizens in the region. As we have informed, two scheduled FlyDubai flights landed today with about 258 citizens and about an hour ago the first evacuation flight operated by Romania within the assistance mechanism for Romanian citizens landed,' said Tarnea.

According to him, about 15,000 Romanian citizens are still in the Gulf region and in other states in the Middle East, and their situation is monitored by MAE.

'About 850 Romanian citizens are in the spotlight in the Southeast Asia region. Of those, about 300 in Southeast Asia and about 2,500 in the Middle East continue to be on the lists of requests for consular assistance. At this moment, over 1,000 Romanian citizens have returned to the country, either on assisted repatriation flights, or on evacuation flights operated by other member states or by Romania, or on commercial flights. (...) As for the flight operated by Romania under the European Civil Protection Mechanism, that was the first flight operated by Romania in the region with a HiSky aircraft. It landed today in Bucharest, with 127 Romanian citizens on board. We are talking about the citizens who are in the attention of the Romanian Consulate in Dubai and the Consulate in Oman, who belong to the priority categories of evacuation.'

The MAE official said that all 127 Romanian citizens were contacted in advance by the consular teams to be included on the evacuation list, and of them 95 are minors.

'The school groups highlighted by the colleagues in the task force and in the consular teams, from the counties of Neamt, Suceava and Vrancea, were taken over by this evacuation flight. On board the aircraft were also 39 other European citizens. And at the same time a number of Romanian citizens - 4 by an aircraft operated by Slovakia, 16 by an aircraft operated by the Czech Republic and 9 by an aircraft operated by Cyprus - have also returned safely from the region to Romania,' Tarnea said. AGERPRES (RO - editing by: Catalina Matei; EN -writing by: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu)