An aircraft mostly used for carrying the president of Brazil departed from Jordan on Wednesday with 32 passengers in a repatriation mission. The Embraer VC-2 plane left Marka International Airport in Amman carrying 30 Brazilians, plus a Jordanian and a Palestinian citizen married to Brazilians.
According to the Brazilian government, the plane is expected to land in Brasília on early Thursday, after stops in Italy, Spain, and the northeastern city of Recife.
This is the ninth flight in an ongoing repatriation mission and the first to bring back people who were in Palestinian territory. Eight previous flights to Israel brought back a total of 1,413 people to Brazil.
The presidential office said in a statement that three vehicles, including buses and vans rented by the Brazilian mission in Ramallah, took passengers from 11 cities in the West Bank to the city of Jericho.
“The vehicles were identified with the Brazilian flag. For security purposes, the license plates, routes, and passenger lists were communicated to the Palestinian and Israeli authorities”, said Alessandro Candeas, head of Brazil’s office in Ramallah.
From Jericho, in the West Bank, the passengers crossed the border with Jordan and boarded a bus to Amman.
Separately, in the Gaza Strip, a group of 34 Brazilians still awaits authorization to cross the border with Egypt. The first group of foreign passport holders and injured Gazans were evacuated through the Rafah crossing into Egypt today, under a deal brokered between Egypt, Israel, and Hamas, and mediated by Qatar, according to Reuters.
The plane carrying West Bank residents was previously in Cairo, awaiting the Brazilians in Gaza.
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