ISLAMABAD: Hundreds of Pakistani students are fleeing Iran this week as escalating hostilities in the Middle East spill across key population centers, forcing them to abandon studies and undertake perilous overland journeys back home.
Iran has been rocked since last week by joint US and Israeli strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, followed by retaliatory missile attacks targeting American military bases across the Gulf region. The escalation has disrupted air travel, heightened military activity along Iran’s southern coastline and turned strategic locations such as Bandar Abbas, near the Strait of Hormuz through which roughly 20 percent of global oil supplies pass, into flashpoints.
Among those returning is Misbah Hussain, a 22-year-old medical student from Pakistan’s coastal district of Badin in Sindh province. Her education in Iran’s Hormozgan province, which borders the Strait of Hormuz, was abruptly cut short by missile strikes near her university hostel.
“I cannot put those scenes into words,” said Hussain, describing the attacks near her hostel at the Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences in the Iranian coastal city of Bandar Abbas.
She said she had traveled by road from Bandar Abbas to the Pakistan-Iran border, changing three to four different cabs along the way as the security situation deteriorated. After crossing into Pakistan, she continued her journey to Karachi via the coastal highway in a vehicle arranged by the local administration, before heading onward to her hometown of Badin, where, she said, her family would witness her “second life.”
