Baltic News Service
August 11, 2008 Monday 3:05 PM EET

LATVIAN FORMIN TO ORGANIZE CHARTER FLIGHTS FROM ARMENIA’S YEREVAN TO
GET PEOPLE HOME FROM GEORGIA

RIGA Aug 11

The Latvian Foreign Ministry in cooperation with Latvian national
carrier Airbaltic will organize charter flights from Yerevan in
Armenia to bring home those Latvia citizens and residents who want to
leave Georgia.

The ministry’s spokesman Ivars Lasis told BNS that the embassy is
organizing buses to from Tbilisi to Erevan, and the charter flight is
planned for Monday evening.

Airbaltic spokesman Janis Vanags told BNS that the airline is doing
everything possible to transport the people who had planned to fly
from Tbilisi in Georgia to Latvia on Sunday night to closest
airports. Airbaltic has offered several variants — to re-book flights
to any other company’s flight from Istanbul in Turkey, Yerevan or Baku
in Azerbaijan. Passengers may also refund their tickets.

No particular time of the flight is known and it is not known how many
people will fly to Latvia. There will also be Lithuanian and Estonian
citizens among passengers.

Latvia’s national carrier Airbaltic has cancelled its Sunday’s flight
to Georgian capital Tbilisi due to security reasons. The next flight
is scheduled for Tuesday.

The flight to Georgia was planned at 10:40 p.m. and the plane had to
return to Riga at 3:45 a.m. Tbilisi time, but both flights have been
cancelled. Airbaltic had planned to fly its biggest airplane to be
able to serve all people who wanted to leave Georgia. So far Airbaltic
had been the last international airline which had not cancelled its
flights to Georgia.

The Latvian embassy has so far found at least 80 Latvian citizens and
residents who want to leave Georgia due to the war situation there,
and 22 of them had to fly home with Sunday’s flight.

The Latvian embassy in Turkey is also involved in helping Latvian
residents get back home, as many people choose to go by bus to Turkey
and then fly to Latvia, including the mountain climber group, which
went for rescue of three Latvian citizens who went missing in Georgian
mountains.

A Russian fighter jet on Sunday dropped a bomb 200 meters away from
the Tbilisi airport’s runway, reported the Georgian Interior
Ministry. The airport has not been damaged and there were no
casualties, said Interior Ministry’s spokesman Shota Utiashvili.

Russia has launched war against Georgia on Friday, bringing troops to
Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia. War has been declared in
Georgia, there is news about thousands of people killed and new
bombings performed by Russia.