New Delhi, June 23 -- India continued evacuating its citizens from Iran on Sunday amid an escalation in hostilities following the US bombing of Iranian nuclear sites, with more than 1,400 Indians brought back from the country. A total of 311 Indian nationals, including students from Kashmir, arrived in New Delhi on a chartered flight from the Iranian city of Mashhad on Sunday afternoon, external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on social media. Officials said another flight from Mashhad was expected late on Sunday night. He said a total of 1,428 Indian nationals had so far been evacuated from Iran. On Saturday, two special flights from Mashhad had brought back a total of 600 Indian nationals. The Indian embassy in Tehran has already announced that all Indian nationals in Iran will be evacuated. Iran is home to about 10,000 Indians, many of them students enrolled in professional courses, and a sizeable number of Indian pilgrims were in the country when hostilities erupted after Israel's air strikes last weekend. India has been evacuating its nationals on chartered flights operated from the Iranian city of Mashhad, the Armenian capital of Yerevan and the Turkmenistan capital of Ashgabat since Wednesday. Iran eased airspace restrictions on Friday to facilitate special flights arranged by India from Mashhad with aircraft operated by Iran's Mahan Air. The Indian embassy in Tehran has also said its evacuation efforts in Iran will cover the citizens of Nepal and Sri Lanka at the request of the governments of those two countries. Nepal's foreign minister Arzu Rana Deuba and Sri Lankan foreign minister Vijitha Herath thanked the Indian government for helping evacuate their citizens. Passengers on Sunday's flight, which included students and people who had travelled to Iran for Ziyarat (religious pilgrimage), recounted the destruction they witnessed in the West Asian country over the last few days. "We saw missiles being intercepted in the sky, we saw a couple of body bags too," said Mohammad Sahil, a resident of Delhi, who had travelled to Iran with his family for a pilgrimage. "We saw explosions. It was awful in my college. Everyone was really scared," a 22-year-old MBBS student from Jammu and Kashmir said....