While Australian Paralympic skier Michael Milton trains for the Milan Cortina Paralympic Games in Italy, his family is stranded thousands of miles away in Qatar.

“They left Doha, were in the air and turned around with the Iranian airspace closures,” Milton told NBC News.

His family was on a Qatar Airways flight from Doha to Venice, Italy on Saturday when the war began. They had already traveled for more than a full day when their flight abruptly changed course, leaving them stranded at Hamad International Airport in Doha, he said.

“The hard thing for them — and for me — was that they’d already traveled 30 hours from Canberra, Australia to get to Doha,” he said.

Milton says the family spent Saturday night in the airport, before evacuating to a hotel on Sunday. “There’s absolutely nothing I can do to help aside from trying to support them,” he said.

There is no clear timeline for when his family will be able to continue their journey. He remains hopeful they will arrive in Italy before the Paralympic Games begin on March 6.

“As an athlete, I have the ability to be able to worry about the things I can control and their situation is definitely not one of them,” he said.

As a six-time Paralympian, Milton said this is the second time in his career that the Olympic Truce has been violated. “I was in Sochi in 2014 when Crimea was invaded,” he said.

The symbolic Olympic Truce, endorsed by the United Nations, was broken amid airstrikes carried out by Israel and the United States against Iran, followed by retaliatory strikes from Iran. The agreement had called on nations to halt all military operations until March 15.

The Paralympics said in a statement: “We are in close contact with all delegations competing at the Games as well as other stakeholders. Many of the teams are already in Europe attending training or holding camps, but the closure of airspace in the Middle East is impacting the arrival of some stakeholders. We would prefer not to comment on the status of individual delegations or stakeholders at this stage but can provide assurance that we are working diligently with Milano Cortina 2026 to find solutions for those affected.”