At least 44 Angolan pilgrims who were in a religious procession returned to Luanda on Wednesday afternoon from Ethiopia, after being held up for a few days in Tel Aviv and traveling 12 hours by road to Cairo, Egypt.
Upon arriving at the 4 de Fevereiro International Airport in Luanda, where they were received by government authorities, Maria Lima, one of the pilgrims from the Pentecostal Church Ministry of Faith and Liberation, said she had had a horrible experience.
“It was a horrible experience, because a conflict of this magnitude between Iran and Israel with missiles, bombs, drones, is a devastating experience,” the nun told Rádio Nacional de Angola.
Pastor Ernestina Matias, leader of the church that promoted the pilgrimage to Israel, recalled that the fighting in that Middle Eastern country began in the early hours of Friday and for safety reasons they had to be housed in a bunker, given the missile bombardments in the region.
“We listened to the safety regulations and whenever we heard the missiles we had to go to the bunker and we spent more time praying for God to give us more deliverance and for the airspace to open up. And we continued with our prayers and faith,” said the pastor in an interview with Public Television.
Ernestina Matias also announced that, following meetings between Angolan and Israeli diplomatic authorities, the caravan of pilgrims left Tel Aviv on Monday and made a 12-hour road trip to the city of Cairo.
“And we arrived in Cairo exhausted. But we always urge the pilgrims to pray,” she said.
The Secretary of State for International Cooperation and Angolan Communities, Domingos Vieira Lopes, said that it was necessary to guarantee the safety of the Angolans, who were part of the ecclesiastical delegation, “because they traveled an unplanned route by road”.
Vieira Lopes also praised the work carried out by the Angolan embassies in Israel, Egypt and Ethiopia, from where the Angolan pilgrims departed on a flight to Luanda. “And today we are here and we are all satisfied, because things ended well”, he concluded.
Israel and Iran have been at war since the early hours of Friday, when Tel Aviv bombed Iranian military and nuclear facilities, causing several deaths, including military leaders and scientists, and hundreds of injuries, according to Iranian diplomacy.
According to the Angolan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 46 Angolan citizens currently reside in Israel, of whom 16 are members of the diplomatic corps and their families and 30 are resident citizens, including 20 adults and 10 children.
