The deadline for evacuation efforts is the 31st of August, with the Taliban stating there will be ‘repercussions’ if any nation tries to go beyond that date.
Twin suicide bombs ripped through crowds outside Kabul airport on Thursday, killing scores of people including 13 US troops and deepening panic in the final days of an already frenzied evacuation effort from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
The Pentagon said Friday 5,400 people are inside Kabul airport awaiting evacuation from Afghanistan, one day after a deadly attack on the operation by the Islamic State group.
General Hank Taylor said that in the 24 hours to 3:00 am Washington time, 12,500 more people had been evacuated in 89 US and coalition flights.
The United States, which has set a deadline of August 31 to complete the evacuation, will be able to airlift people out “until the last moment,” Taylor told reporters.
France could extend the evacuation of French citizens and Afghans in danger from Kabul beyond Friday, a minister said, after Paris previously indicated its airlift mission would end in the evening.
Prime Minister Jean Castex said Thursday that the French evacuation mission would wind up later Friday, but President Emmanuel Macron then said France still wanted to evacuate hundreds of Afghans, some of whom were in buses outside the airport perimeter.
“It (the French evacuation operation) can perhaps go beyond this evening, but we must remain cautious on this subject,” Europe Minister Clement Beaune told Europe 1 radio.
Macron, in comments on a visit to Ireland, has also warned that the situation in Kabul and around the airport remained extremely risky in the wake of the twin suicide bombs outside Kabul airport that killed at least 85 people including 13 US troops.
“The terrorist attack must not prevent these (evacuation) operations. We will continue until the last possible second,” said Beaune.
But echoing the comments by Macron, he indicated, however, that not all Afghans at risk who want to leave country would be able to do so.
“Does this mean that all the people who worked in Afghanistan for the allies, for Europeans, will be able to leave the airport? Without doubt, no, no,” he said.
The evacuation operation carried out by the United Kingdom in Afghanistan will end “in a few hours”, the Minister of Defense Ben Wallace announced Friday morning on Sky News, the day after the attack at Kabul airport.
“We will process those people that we have brought with us, the 1,000 people approximately inside the airfield now,” British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told Sky News. “And we will seek a way to continue to find a few people in the crowd, where we can, but overall the main processing has now closed and we have a matter of hours.”
Spain announced the end of its Kabul evacuations on Friday after a nine-day operation that saw more than 2,200 people flown out of the strife-torn country following the Taliban takeover.
The last two planes arrived in Dubai early on Friday, ending an airlift that began on August 18.
“In total, we have managed to evacuate 2,206 people,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said, indicating the number was almost three times higher than expected and hailing the work involved in a mission of “extraordinary complexity”.
Australia said Friday it pulled all its troops out of Afghanistan shortly before the Kabul airport bombings after receiving “very clear intelligence” of an impending attack.
Suicide bombers set off two blasts that struck crowds outside the Afghan capital’s airport on Thursday, killing dozens of people including 13 US troops.
The Islamic State group said it carried out the attack.
The bombings raise questions about the measures taken to protect US forces, who face an August 31 deadline to withdraw from the country and to complete an airlift that has so far evacuated nearly 100,000 people.
“We were able to ensure the departure of the remaining Australian personnel over the course of last night, not that long before the terrible events that unfolded last night took place,” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison told a news conference.
Morrison said US and British forces had helped Australian troops over nine days to evacuate some 4,100 people, including 3,200 Australians and Afghan citizens with Australian visas.
The prime minister said Australia had completed its evacuation operations and was now in a “post-evacuation phase”.
Poland has completed its Afghanistan evacuation mission after transporting more than 1,300 people from Kabul, officials said on Thursday.
The evacuees were mainly Afghan staff of the Polish military contingent, but also included employees of the European Union and International Monetary Fund.
“More than 1,300 people have been transported to Poland,” Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Przydacz told reporters in Warsaw, adding that evacuations were being stopped “for security reasons”. Przydacz said Taliban authorities were only allowing foreign citizens to depart as of Wednesday.
Among the evacuees there were also 175 former employees of the Lithuania military contingent and a few who had assisted Estonian troops.
There was also a Dutch family and a person evacuated at the request of the International Olympic Committee, Przydacz said.
Poland evacuated people from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan before transporting them to Poland.
The 14th and final flight from Uzebkistan landed in the Polish capital Warsaw earlier on Thursday.
“Poland does not leave its friends in need and we always try to help in such situations,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said. Morawiecki said Poland had evacuated 937 people, without explaining whether these were exclusively Afghan interpreters working with Polish troops.
Przydacz said more than 1,000 evacuees were currently in Poland and under quarantine.
The Dutch government said it would stop evacuation flights from Kabul on Thursday in what it acknowledged was a “painful moment” that would leave some people behind in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
The Netherlands said it had been ordered by US forces to leave ahead of the withdrawal of American troops on August 31, and advised people to avoid the airport for security reasons.
“The Netherlands has been informed today by the United States that it has to leave and will in all probability run the last flights later today,” the Dutch foreign and defence ministers said in a letter to parliament.
“This is a painful moment because it means that despite all the great efforts of the recent period, people who are eligible for evacuation to the Netherlands will be left behind,” Foreign Minister Sigrid Kaag and Defence Minister Ank Bijleveld said.
The Dutch embassy and military team at Kabul airport would also fly out on the last planes on Thursday, it said.
“Everything possible is being done to help the several hundred people who are now within the gates of the airport take the flights that are scheduled today.”
One C-130 Hercules would remain in the region in case of emergencies.
The Dutch said the US order to leave the airport ahead of August 31 was because “for a few days before that, large numbers of American soldiers and equipment have to fly out.”
The “rapidly deteriorating security situation” around the airport, where Western officials have warned of a possible terror attack, was also taken into account, the Dutch government said.
Canada said Thursday it had ended its evacuation operations in Afghanistan, where foreign governments are rushing to airlift citizens and Afghan allies in the wake of a Taliban takeover and ahead of an August 31 deadline.
“Over the last day, our evacuation operations have ceased,” Canadian defense ministry representative Lieutenant-General Wayne Eyre told a press conference.
“We wish we could have stayed longer and rescued everyone who was so desperate to leave, that we could not is truly heartbreaking, but the circumstances on the ground, rapidly deteriorated,” he added.
Hungary announced Thursday the end of its evacuation mission in Afghanistan, after having exfiltrated 540 people since the fall of Kabul at the hands of the Taliban, of which a large majority of Afghan nationals who had cooperated with the Hungarian forces.
“The operation is over,” Defense Minister Tibor Benko announced at a press conference in Budapest.
Germany has pulled out all its soldiers from Afghanistan with its last evacuation flight from Kabul, Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said Thursday.
“All soldiers, members of the foreign ministry and federal police who have led this mission to a safe end for us on the ground have been flown out of Kabul,” she said.
The military evacuation mission has therefore now ended, she said, adding that she was “relieved that our soldiers who carried out this dangerous operation have safely left Afghan airspace”.
Germany had flown out 5,347 people since August 16, the minister said.
Sweden announced that it had completed its evacuations from Kabul on Friday, after having evacuated more than 1,100 people since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan.
“The extremely difficult and risky conditions did not allow us to evacuate more Swedes and local employees,” Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde announced at a press conference.
The Swiss government said Friday it had ended its evacuation operation out of Kabul after helping airlift 387 people to Switzerland following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan.
The foreign ministry said that 34 Swiss nationals were among those evacuated, but that 11 citizens and 16 residents of the wealthy Alpine nation remained in the war-torn country.
Norway’s foreign ministry said Friday that its evacuations from Afghanistan were over with two final planes touching down in Oslo.
“The last Norwegian plane from Kabul has just landed,” Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide told AFP via email in the afternoon, adding that around 20 people had been on board.
Including a plane that landed Friday morning, over 1,100 people have been brought from Afghanistan to Norway since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul
