A group of roughly 200 Italian nationals, mostly underage students, are stranded in Dubai after the United Arab Emirates (UAE) closed its airspace following Iran’s drone strikes.
In a brief statement, the Italian Foreign Ministry announced on Sunday that the Italian embassy in Abu Dhabi and the consulate in Dubai are following the case of 190 Italians that are part of the World Students Connection (WSC), an Rome-based international educational programs association.
The group found themselves stranded in Dubai after the UAE and other Middle Eastern countries shut down their airspace in response to Iran launching a series of drone strikes in retaliation for the joint U.S.-Israel military strikes against high-profile Iranian regime targets. The BBC reports that one such drone strike hit the luxury Fairmont The Palm Hotel in Dubai.
Of the 190 total, the Italian Foreign Ministry detailed, 124 are underage students and 66 are adult students, teachers, and WSC staff members. 65 hotel rooms were made available for the stranded group across two hotels in Dubai.
Rai News reported on Sunday evening that in addition to the WSC students, about a dozen students from Veneto — including five 16 year-olds from a high school in Padua — were also left stranded and are receiving assistance by the Italian consulate in Dubai.
“All young people are entrusted to their tutors and teachers and will be supervised 24 hours a day by WSC staff,” the Foreign Ministry concluded.
A notice about flight disruptions is pictured at the closed check-in counter for Gulf carrier Etihad at London Heathrow Airport in west London on March 1, 2026, as flights are severely disrupted following the US and Israel’s strikes on Iran. (JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP via Getty Images)
Alessandro Tristano, one of the students stranded in Dubai, explained to Sky TG24 on Sunday that the group received a visit from the Italian consul in Dubai who “took care of all the bureaucratic issues and also arranged accommodation for the students.” He emphasized that the group is “locked down” in the hotel, and “if there are alarms, in some cases they have to go down to the basement.”
“We don’t know when we’ll be able to leave.” 21 year-old student Daniele Bovo told Rai News.
“We saw trails in the sky caused by drones intercepted by anti-aircraft fire and some fires on the ground,” Bovo continued. “We were supposed to return on Monday, but no one can tell us when we will be leaving.”
According to Sky TG24, almost 22,400 Italians reside in the United Arab Emirates, making it the Middle Eastern country with the largest amount of Italian residents, followed by Israel at about 20,800. There are 470 Italian nationals reportedly residing in Iran — a situation that Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani described as “very worrying.”
“We have already reduced our diplomatic presence in Tehran to a minimum for several weeks. We are ready to evacuate any Italians who wish to do so, as we did during the war a few months ago,” Tajani said, and urged Italians to “stay put, remain at home or in their hotels.”
The ongoing situation in the region also left Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto in Dubai over the weekend.
Reuters reports that Crosetto travelled to Dubai on Friday to join his family on a holiday. The official returned on a military aircraft back to Rome and left his family in the UAE — a decision that the official explained through social media sought to “avoid exposing others to further dangers” if they travelled alongside him. In response to attacks from leftists politicians, Crosetto detailed that he paid “triple” for the flight, dismissing claims that he returned to Rome using a ‘state flight’
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