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Sunday, July 6, 2025

Trinis in Qatar safe after Iran’s attempted attacks

by

Ryan Bachoo
12 days ago
20250624
Adrian Sookhan, a T&T national living and working in Qatar.

Adrian Sookhan, a T&T national living and working in Qatar.

Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­al Adri­an Sookhan was prepar­ing to meet some trainees where he works in Do­ha, Qatar, around 8 pm yes­ter­day, when he heard three loud bangs.

The noise he heard was in­cep­tors staving off a mis­sile at­tack from Iran on Unit­ed States air­bas­es in the coun­try.

Sookhan, along with sev­er­al oth­er T&T na­tion­als, work in the en­er­gy sec­tor in Qatar.

Many of them who live there did not want to speak to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, as Qatar has strict rules that gov­ern the coun­try and shar­ing the im­ages and videos of Iran’s at­tempt­ed at­tack was pro­hib­it­ed.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day not long af­ter the at­tempt­ed at­tacks, Sookhan, who has been liv­ing and work­ing in Qatar for the last eight years, said, “A lot of things were go­ing through my mind. I guess this is what peo­ple who live in war ar­eas usu­al­ly go through. It’s like many things are go­ing through my mind, like what’s go­ing to hap­pen? My fam­i­ly, every­thing.”

Sookhan said ear­li­er yes­ter­day, there were re­ports the coun­try could ex­pect an at­tack from Iran and an hour be­fore the strikes, the Qatari gov­ern­ment closed its air­space.

“We took pre­cau­tions and most of us stayed at home in case of some­thing like this hap­pen­ing. Every­one’s emo­tions are high,” Sookhan added.

As the news of Iran’s strikes made in­ter­na­tion­al head­lines, friends and fam­i­ly from this coun­try start­ed to reach out to Sookhan and oth­er T&T na­tion­als in Qatar.

He works in the oil and gas sec­tor in an in­ter­gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion called Gas Ex­port­ing Coun­tries Fo­rum. T&T is a mem­ber of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Sookhan said com­ing from the Caribbean, he had nev­er seen any­thing like the mis­sile at­tacks un­til now.

He added, “Since the war start­ed, it was okay for us be­cause one thing with Qatar, they share good re­la­tions with both Iran and the US. It was fine un­til last week when the at­tacks hap­pened.”

The Qatari gov­ern­ment was ex­pect­ed to is­sue a state­ment last night to guide cit­i­zens and res­i­dents on how to pro­ceed with their day, to­day.

There are no im­me­di­ate plans for Sookhan or his fel­low Trin­bag­o­ni­ans to evac­u­ate Do­ha in light of the at­tempt­ed at­tacks by Iran.

He con­firmed to his fam­i­ly and the peo­ple of T&T that they are safe at the mo­ment.

Mean­while, the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the An­ju­man Sun­nat-ul-Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion (AS­JA) is­sued a state­ment call­ing for peace and me­di­a­tion in the Mid­dle East amid an es­ca­la­tion of vi­o­lence.

He urged all T&T na­tion­als to put their safe­ty first and evac­u­ate if they feel they are in dan­ger.

The Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs al­so re­leased a state­ment “strong­ly en­cour­ag­ing” T&T na­tion­als in the Mid­dle East to un­der­take pre­cau­tion­ary ac­tions.

Those mea­sures in­clude re­main­ing vig­i­lant and stay­ing in­formed by mon­i­tor­ing cred­i­ble news sources and of­fi­cial ad­vi­sories, reg­is­ter­ing with the Min­istry’s Reg­is­tra­tion Sys­tem for Na­tion­als Abroad, en­sur­ing that all trav­el doc­u­ments are valid and up to date, com­ply­ing ful­ly with safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tives is­sued by lo­cal au­thor­i­ties, as­cer­tain­ing the lo­ca­tion of the near­est emer­gency shel­ter in the event of in­ten­si­fy­ing hos­til­i­ties and for­mu­lat­ing con­tin­gency plans for de­par­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly where per­son­al safe­ty may be at risk.


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