The 18 Cypriots, including 14 students and two teachers, who had been volunteering in Tanzania and later got stuck due to political unrest have been brought to Zanzibar on Monday.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Theodoros Gotsis confirmed that the group had been transferred from Kilwa, a coastal town in Tanzania, to Zanzibar on Monday, and would fly back via Dubai the following day, eventually arriving in Cyprus on Wednesday.

The repatriation efforts to bring students back to Cyprus were carried out in cooperation with the foreign ministry, the high commissioner in Nairobi and the national crisis management centre, in continuous collaboration with the EU delegation in Tanzania’s largest city, Dar es Salaam.

Protests broke out in the city following the elections held in the country last Wednesday, which the opposition party and many young voters had denounced as unfair. By the weekend, international media outlets had reported 700 deaths as a result of the protests.

The 14 Cypriot students from a private school visited Tanzania as part of a volunteering programme, staying around 300 km from the unrest in Dar es Salaam.

They were accompanied by four adults, including two supervisors and two Greek volunteers.