150 Pakistanis stuck at Chinese airport appeal to govt for evacuation.

URUMQI -- IA group of nearly 150 Pakistani nationals stuck at an airport in the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang for the past four days amidst the coronavirus outbreak have appealed to the government in Islamabad to evacuate them back home.

The Pakistani citizens, most of whom are students and their families with the rest being traders, have been trapped at the airport in Urmqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, for several days as the death toll from the coronavirus outbreak spreading in China rose to 213 and the World Health Organisation called it a global health emergency.

They can neither leave the airport because many of them have reached the expiry of their visas, nor can they fly home due to Pakistan's suspension of its flights to and from China in the wake of the outbreak.

Tariq Rauf, a PhD scholar from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Shangla district who was studying in China, in a video message sent to media said that members of the Pakistani community were stuck in Urmqi because their onward flight to Pakistan had been cancelled.

Accompanied by other Pakistani nationals and children in the video, Rauf said the visas of many of them had expired and they were told to remain inside the airport.

"For how long will we stay here?" he questioned, adding that many people were running out of money to spend. Rauf told media the Pakistani nationals were having to fend for themselves while at the airport, sleeping on benches and purchasing food using their own money.

Rauf said the Pakistani...