Australian citizens arrive in Sydney from Gaza

More Australian citizens have arrived in Sydney after they managed to leave the war in Gaza.

Transcript

00:00 There were beautiful and quite moving scenes here at Sydney Airport last night after a

00:07 group of repatriated Australians landed after being evacuated out of Gaza.

00:13 They were greeted by family and friends, many of them holding balloons and flowers, and

00:18 they hugged and cried as they reunited with each other.

00:22 This group of 12 Australians and their family members landed on a Qatar Airways flight around

00:27 7 o'clock, and this is the biggest group of repatriated Australians out of Gaza to land

00:34 on a single commercial flight.

00:36 Earlier on the weekend we saw a family of four land in Adelaide and another family of

00:41 three land in Melbourne.

00:43 But this has been a very difficult journey for all of these Australians and their family

00:48 members after being helped out of Gaza by the Australian government through the Rafah

00:53 border crossing with Egypt.

00:55 The border crossing has been closed since the outbreak of the war and was briefly reopened

01:00 last week to allow some foreign nationals to leave the area.

01:04 We heard from some of these passengers and their family members.

01:08 Many of them spoke about how happy and relieved they were to be back in Australia, while others

01:13 spoke about the horror and trauma that their family and friends are still facing in Gaza.

01:19 This is a little bit of what some of them had to say.

01:22 We've been through hell, we cannot describe it, very, very scary.

01:27 It's been three weeks for us, we're living a nightmare, we cannot work, we cannot eat.

01:33 I'm very nerve-wracking, but what can we do?

01:37 Just got to take the positive moments, which is now seeing my sister, her kids and her

01:41 husband, and that's what we're looking at today.

01:43 To have our family back, know they're safe, very happy, very happy.

01:48 Every person that I know, a Palestinian, had lost a family member or know someone who had

01:53 lost a family member.

01:54 As you heard there, there was plenty of emotion here at Sydney Airport last night, and we

01:59 also heard some chants from the crowd of "Free Palestine" and "Free Gaza" as well.

02:05 The Department of Foreign Affairs says it's now assisted 25 Australian citizens and their

02:11 family members out of Gaza and is still trying to help evacuate a further 67 Australian

02:18 citizens and their family members who are still in that area.

02:21 [BLANK_AUDIO]