The 28 crew members of Bangladeshi ship "Banglar Samriddhi", who were stranded in war-ravaged Ukraine, are set to leave for Bangladesh from Romania’s capital Bucharest by a special flight.
A Turkish airlines flight carrying the crew will start for Dhaka at 21:45pm on Tuesday (local time), sources at the foreign ministry’s East Europe and CIS wing of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed.
The flight is scheduled to land at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka at around 12:15pm on Wednesday.
“The body of the ship’s third engineer Hadisur Rahman, who was killed during a rocket attack on the ship, has been preserved in a bunker near Ukraine and it will be brought back home at a convenient time,” said Bangladesh Shipping Corporation (BSC) Deputy General Manager (planning) Captain Md Mujibur Rahman.
Meanwhile, general secretary of Bangladesh Merchant Marine Officers' Association (BMMOA) Md Shakwat Hossain said: “As situation in Ukraine is worsening the procedure to bring back Hadisur’s body is being delayed. The procedure to bring back his body home will begin within five to seven days depending on the situation there.”
On March 6, the crew members safely reached Romania from Ukraine and have been staying in a hotel in Bucharest.
The BSC ship got stranded in Ukraine as Russian invasion started soon after it anchored at Olvia port on February 23.
