Cypriot pilgrims left for Jerusalem barely an hour after Hamas fired rockets into Israel even though it was known the attack had started, the groups’ travel agent said on Tuesday.
“The first plane took off from [Larnaca] airport at 7.30am and the second one at 8.20am after a very slight delay. If they already knew about what was unfolding in Israel, why did they allow the second flight to depart?” owner of the Nazoreos travel agency Eleni Fellouka asked.
She told the CyBC that all three of the religious tourist groups reported on in the aftermath of the attacks, have since returned to the island without incident, although they passed through a very uncertain 48 hours.
Fellouka said around 110 members of the religious tour group was set to travel in two buses and on two separate TUS flights. They were accompanied by a priest and a religious elder.
She said she later found out it was already known at the departure times that the rockets had been fired.
Upon landing the passengers of the first short flight were immediately ushered by Israeli security forces into a shelter at the airport.
The second flight, of which the travel agent was a part, was not permitted to land upon arrival and was kept for a long time in the air while passengers began to worry and speculate about the reasons for the delay.
“The crew and pilot of TUS handled the situation with remarkable calm, but we are frequent fliers, and we knew something was wrong. We asked the stewardess what was going on but she could not tell us. One of the passengers next to me said, ‘I am young and I don’t want to die!’,” Fellouka recalled.
Upon landing, the travel agent immediately messaged her son in Cyprus, who told her the Islamist organisation Hamas had fired rockets into Israel.
“We made up a group of about 250 actually, since some elected to travel separately, and we basically travelled into the wolf’s lair, it’s very troubling,” Fellouka said, noting that since the hostilities were known to have started at 6.30am on Saturday, the flight ought to have been cancelled or at least delayed.
“When we finally landed, the Israeli authorities had already notified us via phone message of the location points of shelters throughout the city, and we got in touch with the ministry of interior, the embassy and the Cypriot representative to Ramallah and followed all their instructions,” Fellouka explained.
The tour guides informed the groups that safety was paramount and the programme was cancelled but managed nonetheless to cautiously visit the Tomb of Christ.
“Our planned hotel booking was in Bethlehem, a Palestinian controlled area, and here we faced the difficulty, as entrances to the city were closed,” Fellouka continued.
The travel agent described how the two buses eventually managed to reach their destination by a roundabout route through small villages.
The embassy which had been alerted, aided with information from then on, organised for 180 of the pilgrims to return to Cyprus on Sunday night, while the remaining pilgrims returned on Monday night.
“Despite the fact that the specific location [Bethlehem] was calm, the fear was there, because you just don’t know where a rocket might land,” Fellouka said.
Expressing her gratitude for touching down safely back in Cyprus, the travel agent wrote on a social media post: “With the help of God we have arrived back on our native soil. We started with a smile and a longing for a blessed pilgrimage. We entered a country where war had begun. God was with us. Our adventures taught us a life lesson!”
