MOSCOW. April 7 (Interfax-AVN) - A YAK-42 Clobber airplane from the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry took off from a Moscow airport at 11:04 a.m. Moscow time (0704 GMT) and is now on its way to the Syrian capital of Damascus to evacuate Russian diplomats and journalists fleeing Iraq.
The plane is carrying four doctors from the Zashchita (Protection) All-Russian medical center, medical equipment and an operations team from the Emergency Situations Ministry, the ministry's information department told Interfax on Monday.
The flight is expected to take five hours and ten minutes.
On Sunday, a convoy of Russian Embassy diplomats and journalists was caught in cross fire near Baghdad. Five diplomats sustained injuries. One of them underwent an operation. He is now in stable condition.
At 9:00 a.m. Moscow time (0500 GMT), nine diplomats left the town of Feluja, where they had spent the night, and continued on to the Syrian border.