Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
21-08-2021
Bureau Report
KABUL/ ISLAMABAD: Desperation deepened around Kabul’s airport on Saturday with evacuation operations in chaos and US President Joe Biden warning he could not predict the outcome of one of the “most difficult airlifts in history”.
Six days after the Taliban took back power in Afghanistan, the flow of people trying to flee continued to overwhelm Kabul.
Families hoping for a miracle escape crowded between the barbed-wire surround separating the Taliban from US troops and remnants of Afghan forces amid chaos and reports of violence by the group.
“Our fighters will continue to demonstrate restraint,” a Taliban official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
He ruled out incidents of reported kidnappings of foreigners, but added, “We are questioning some of them before they exit the country.”
The Taliban have denied responsibility for the disorder at Kabul airport and have said the West could have had a better plan to evacuate.
Reports of targeted killings in areas overrun by the Taliban have mounted, fuelling fears it will return the country to the repressive rule imposed when the armed group was last in power from 1996 to 2001.
France’s says it has evacuated over 570 people, including at least 407 Afghan citizens, from Kabul onboard its military aircraft since Monday.
In a statement, the Defence Ministry added that a fourth evacuation plane landed Friday evening in Paris, carrying four French citizens and 99 Afghans, mostly people who worked with the French government or French groups in Afghanistan.
The ministry said that state services and the French embassy, which has been moved to Kabul airport, remain “fully mobilised to ensure new flights as soon as possible.”
The German military has airlifted almost 2,000 people out of Kabul airport, Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer told journalists.
Two light helicopters, shipped to Kabul overnight, are ready to start evacuation operations out of the city, which will be coordinated with international partners on the ground, she added.
Germany’s chief of defence, General Eberhard Zorn, said the German air force will transport baby food and hygienic articles needed at the airport to Kabul.
Switzerland has postponed a charter flight to Uzbekistan aimed at helping the evacuation effort from neighboring Afghanistan, its foreign ministry said, citing worsening security that has hindered access on the ground to Kabul airport.
“The security situation around Kabul airport has worsened significantly in the last hours. A large number of people in front of the airport and sometimes violent confrontations are hindering access to the airport in Kabul,” the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) said in a statement.
Italy says its military has evacuated nearly 1,000 Afghan citizens out of Kabul over the last five days.
The Defense Ministry said that two flights carrying 207 Afghans arrived in Rome from Kuwait, which Italy is using as a staging ground for the Kabul evacuations.
Italy has deployed more than 1,500 servicemen and women to operate an airbridge from Kabul to Kuwait aboard four C130J aircraft, and to ferry evacuees to safety in Italy aboard four KC767s.
The Dutch defense ministry says that the first group of Afghans evacuated from Kabul on Dutch military transport planes has arrived at a barracks in the northern Netherlands that has been transformed into a temporary accommodation center.
The ministry said Friday that a group of 28 Afghans has been taken to the center in Zoutcamp, a small village come 180 kilometers (120 miles) north of Amsterdam.
Dutch authorities say they have so far managed five flights out of Kabul with nearly 300 passengers. It is not clear how many of them were Afghans.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has conceded that the Afghan army’s resistance against Taliban had been misjudged.
“The army collapsed at a breathtaking pace,” Merkel said at an election event. “We had expected the resistance to be stronger.”
Merkel said the focus now was on rescuing people from Afghanistan, but later there would need to be a discussion on what had or had not been achieved.
Uzbekistan has accepted about 400 more refugees from Afghanistan and put them up in temporary accommodation near the Afghan border, the Russian state news agency TASS reported, citing an unnamed source familiar with the matter.
It is unclear how many Afghans have crossed into the former Soviet republic. The Tashkent government has denied that senior Afghan figures such as ethnic Uzbek leader Abdul Rashid Dustum were among them.
A second Spanish repatriation plane from Afghanistan has arrived at a Madrid military base where the evacuees where greeted by Spanish Presidency Minister Felix Bolanos.
The plane flew from Kabul via Dubai carrying 110 people, including Afghans and their families.
Indonesia has moved its Afghanistan diplomatic mission from Kabul to Pakistan, its foreign minister said, after its air force evacuated dozens in the wake of the Taliban’s seizure of power.
“Temporarily, the diplomatic mission in Kabul will be done from Islamabad,” Retno Marsudi said in televised remarks at the Halim military airport in Jakarta.
The initial plan had been to “continue our diplomatic mission in Kabul with a small team” but changed due to a “new development”, which she did not specify. She did not take questions.
Romania’s foreign ministry says that a military aircraft has evacuated 14 Romanian citizens and four Bulgarians from Kabul airport to Islamabad.
Authorities said the evacuees were assisted on arrival by Romanian Embassy staff in Pakistan. It was Romania’s third evacuation flight this week using a C-130 Hercules military aircraft.
The ministry also said that it has “validated and contacted” a number of Afghan citizens who collaborated with its troops during their mission in Afghanistan who have expressed a wish to be evacuated to Romania.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says 13 countries have thus far agreed to at least temporarily host at-risk Afghans evacuated from Afghanistan. Another 12 have agreed to serve as transit points for evacuees, including Americans and others, leaving Afghanistan.
Blinken said in a statement that potential Afghan refugees not already cleared for resettlement in the United States will be housed at facilities in Albania, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Mexico, Poland, Qatar, Rwanda, Ukraine and Uganda.
Transit countries include Bahrain, Britain, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Qatar, Tajikistan, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan.
Earlier, the US has advised Americans in Afghanistan to avoid travelling to Kabul airport in an embassy travel advisory as thousands try to flee the country.
“Because of potential security threats outside the gates at the Kabul airport, we are advising US citizens to avoid travelling to the airport and to avoid airport gates at this time unless you receive individual instructions from a US government representative to do so,” the advisory said.
