Hundreds stranded in Peru to board charter flights

Hundreds of US tourists and US residents were finally returning home to the United States on Friday after being stuck for months in Peru.

A humanitarian flight by Delta Airlines arrived at a Peruvian Air Force base in Lima to pick up the stranded people, who hadn't been able to leave for over three months due to the country's strict coronavirus quarantine.

Peru's commercial airports have been closed since mid-March allowing only for the occasional rescue mission from abroad to come and retrieve marooned citizens.

The travelers were told to head to a park in Lima's posh Miraflores neighborhood at 6:00 a.m. where they were met by local authorities who then put them on buses to be taken to an airbase on the outskirts of the capital.

According to sources inside the Municipality of Miraflores, more than 7,000 citizens of the European community, the United States and Canada have left on humanitarian flights since the state of emergency due to COVID 19 was declared over three months ago

Peru exceeded 10,000 deaths on Thursday due to the new coronavirus in the midst of its worst economic crisis and while infections are increasing by the thousands every 24 hours.

The country is the seventh with the largest spread of the pandemic in the world and mortality is concentrated in the poorer areas of Lima.

The health ministry reported 10,045 deaths so far, a death toll that is more than triple than the number killed during the cholera epidemic in 1991.