126 Lebanese workers from Kazakhstan returned to their country after media reports said they were at risk from riots and attacks by local workers who broke out at their workplace against Arab and foreign workers.
They arrived at Rafic Hariri International Airport in Beirut on Tuesday on a relief flight to Lebanon´s Middle East Airlines.
The Secretary-General of the High Relief Commission, Major General Mohammed Khair, who was receiving the plane, told reporters that the return of these planes was made with great effort in coordination between Prime Minister Saad Hariri, the Authority and Middle East Airlines and the Ambassador of Lebanon in Kazakhstan and the Kazakh authorities.
He said the returnees "will spend a 15-day summer break in Beirut and then return to work with assurances from the Kazakh authorities."
According to Lebanese media reports, the workers attacked Lebanese and Arab engineers, laborers and Arabs in a camp for the United Contractors Company (CCC) in a work project at the Tengiz oil site in western Kazakhstan, about 2,000 kilometers from the capital.
The attacks followed the publication of a Lebanese who works on the project as a "Salafi" at his expense in social networking sites, where he was succeeded by a Kazakh girl who was considered a misnomer against the girl and provoked the anger of the local workers.
The attacks resulted in the deaths of a number of wounded from different nationalities, including Lebanese, and the Kazakh authorities to evacuate them and the formation of a commission of inquiry into the incident and take the necessary measures to avoid the recurrence of similar incidents.
