Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was evacuated by the Sri Lankan air force on Tuesday from the hotel in Galle where he has been stranded since the tsunamis hit the South Asian nation, the air force said.
Kohl was on a private vacation when the disaster occurred on Sunday. But he was not injured.
A Sri Lankan helicopter brought Kohl and six other people from his hotel in Thalpe, a suburb of Galle, about 100 kilometers south of Colombo, to a nearby airbase of Katukurunda, south of Colombo.
A powerful earthquake measuring 8.7 on the Richter scale and the following tsunamis on Sunday hit countries around the Indian Ocean including Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand, killing more than 48,000 people and leaving millions displaced.
About 18,700 people were killed in Sri Lanka in the tidal waves.