Israel announced that its operation to return citizens stranded abroad is underway, with the first two return flights expected to land in Ben-Gurion Airport on Thursday morning.
This comes after the US government launched a charter flight program to bring Americans from the Middle East to the United States on Wednesday; other countries around the world began rescue efforts for their citizens in the region.
As of Wednesday, over 17,500 US citizens had returned from the Middle East to the US, with over 8,500 of those returning in the past day, the State Department said, adding that "many more" had left to other countries in Europe and Asia, and others are still in transit back to the US.
Hundreds of thousands of Europeans and US citizens have been stranded in the Gulf states since Israel and the US struck Iran on Saturday, and Iran then attacked its neighbors. Those stuck in the region are on holiday, in transit, or permanently based there.
Qatar Airways said that it will operate limited relief flights starting from Thursday for stranded passengers departing from Muscat and Riyadh, it said on X.
Flights are planned from Muscat to Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, London's Heathrow, Madrid, and Rome, as well as from Riyadh to Frankfurt.
First UK repatriation flight from Middle East delayed to Thursday
Also, a British flight to repatriate UK nationals after the outbreak of war in the Middle East did not take off as scheduled from Oman on Wednesday night and has been rescheduled for later on Thursday, Sky News reported.
Reuters could not immediately confirm the report. The British Foreign Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.
The flight, which was scheduled to depart from Muscat at 1900 GMT on Wednesday, was open to British nationals and their spouses or partners and children, with the most vulnerable people having priority, the Foreign Office had said earlier.
"We have been told the plane will take off later Thursday once the pilot has rested," Sky News quoted an unnamed passenger, who was due to travel on the flight, as saying.
"We were told due to slow check-in and delays, the pilot had clocked his hours so needed to rest," the passenger added.
British Airways, which is currently unable to fly from Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Amman, and Tel Aviv, said it would also operate a flight from Oman in the early hours of Thursday local time.
Israeli airline El Al is also conducting repatriation flights. It announced that it will not be flying on Shabbat, as is the company's policy.
According to El Al, the slots allocated to it on Friday and after Shabbat are sufficient to cover the quota of passengers it would have carried over the course of Shabbat.
The Abu Dhabi Airports Authority in the UAE said that it had resumed operations from the Zayed International Airport on Thursday, Reuters reported, citing local media
Ziv Reinstein contributed to this report.