NEW DELHI, Jan 31(TOI): Standing in the darkness in the chaos of Saturday night Cairo, members of the Indian community had nothing but their children's cricket bats to fend off looters. One of them requesting anonymity managed to get through to this paper despite intermittent mobile phone services. "All the men are standing guard outside our building. Our wives and children are inside. There is no police or military on the roads in our area. Shops near here are being looted, they even looted the main government hospital. Pray for us," he said.

The decision to leave came in the morning after they spent two sleepless nights on Friday and Saturday worried for the safety of their families. They got in touch with the Indian Ambassador to Egypt R Swaminathan, who assured them that external affairs minister S M Krishna had been apprised of the situation.

There are 3,000 odd Indians living and working in Egypt. About 2,000 are in Cairo. Though there are some who have decided to stay put for now, those keen to return home say: "We want to wait till the situation improves before coming back."

For two days when communications including the internet and mobile phone services were blocked all over Cairo, they were unable to call their families back in India, speak to each other in the city during the curfew or books tickets online. Then they found out that most carriers had stopped operations to and from Cairo.

"We have enough provisions to last a week here, after that we don't know. The children can't go to school and we are not able to go to work. All we could do was watch the news on TV," said one.

News trickled in Sunday morning about the special Air India flight being arranged by the Indian government. Many are hoping to be among the 280 passengers who can be accommodated on this flight.