There have been no injuries to any Jews or Israelis living in the Romanian city of Timisoara, where mass killings of people demonstrating for political reforms have been reported in recent days, reliable sources said Wednesday.
The sources said none of the estimated 20 Israelis studying medicine and dentistry at the university in Timisoara has been harmed.
They are among some 1,000 Israeli students at universities throughout Romania, which has been swept in recent days by demonstrations for the same type of reform that has taken place elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
Initial reports indicated that a ban on travel into and out of the country had not affected the flow of Soviet Jewish immigrants to Israel, whose preferred route is to fly from Moscow to Bucharest, and then from the Romanian capital to Tel Aviv.
But Simcha Dinitz, chairman of the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency Executives, reported from Moscow late Wednesday that he had received reports of delays and disruptions along the Romanian route.
Dinitz, who spoke by telephone to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s Jerusalem bureau, said that Israeli consular officials in Moscow were now “looking for additional routes” to fly Soviet Jews to Israel.
(JTA correspondent David Landau in Jerusalem contributed to this report.)
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
