Get us out of here, plead foreign students at China virus epicentre

"PLEASE SAVE US"

Another Pakistani student in Wuhan, who declined to be identified because he feared reprisals from authorities, said the students had been in contact with their embassy but it had not responded in two days.

"They say that we cannot evacuate. Why can't they evacuate us? Other countries have evacuated," he said. "We are thankful to the Chinese government ... but we are not the responsibility of the Chinese government. We are the responsibility of our government."

The United States airlifted nearly 200 Americans from Wuhan on Wednesday and South Korea on Thursday was preparing up to four evacuation flights.

In one video posted on social media, a group of Pakistani students who said they were in Wuhan chanted "please save us" while one man asked the government to "take some measures to get us out of here".

China has become a major destination for South Asian university students in recent years, fuelled in part by scholarships offered as China expands its influence in the region through President Xi Jinping's flagship Belt and Road infrastructure programme. Pakistan and China are very close allies.

More than 400 Bangladeshis, mostly students, are stranded in Wuhan.

"Wuhan has become a ghost town," Rakibil Hafiz, a Bangladeshi engineering student at Hubei University of Technology, told Reuters via WhatsApp.

"There is nothing we can do. We are all stuck in the dormitory. We are very worried. I want to go home."