A Singaporean woman who was evacuated from Yemen with her four children via the Chinese frigate Linyi said they were very grateful for boarding the Chinese naval vessel.

“If we can’t get on the ship, we can’t get out of Yemen,” said Sherin Fathimah Syed Abdul Ravoof, 37. She and her four children, ages 4 to 13, got back to Singapore safely on April 4.

The family arrived in Djibouti on the frigate on April 2. Then they took a five-hour flight to Istanbul to transfer. They finally arrived in Singapore after a flight of about 11 hours. However, the long journey is only part of the story.

… Associate Professor Li Mingjiang, at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, said the evacuation of foreign citizens from Yemen was a significant move for both China and the world.

Li said that the scale of foreign citizens who were rescued via the Chinese vessel was relatively small, but this was the first time that China had helped foreign nationals aboard one of their frigates and this illustrated China’s wish to safeguard the security of overseas Chinese as well as foreign citizens.