LONDON, Aug 29 (NNN-Xinhua) — The final evacuation flight purely for civilians under Britain’s Operation Pitting has left the Kabul airport, the British Ministry of Defense said.
Any further flights leaving Kabul under Britain’s evacuation operation “will have UK diplomatic and military personnel on board,” the ministry added.
General Nick Carter, Britain’s chief of defense staff, said: “(The withdrawal) is not how we hoped it would end.”
“I think we have done an extraordinary job to evacuate as many as we can, but I’m afraid it’s absolutely heart-breaking we can’t get everybody out,” Carter told Sky News.
He warned that Britain is “not out of the woods yet” as this final phase gets under way.
“The operation will carry on for a little bit longer. But it’s been a huge enterprise,” he said, noting that troops are working in the face of a “very demanding threat” in Afghanistan.
Two suicide bomb attacks rocked the Kabul airport in the Afghan capital on Thursday, killing at least 103 people, including 13 U.S. service members, two British nationals and a child of another British national.
The Daesh has claimed responsibility for the deadly attack, saying it was targeting “translators and collaborators with the American army.”
Britain had airlifted 14,543 Afghans and British nationals from Kabul since its Operation Pitting began on Aug 13, the ministry of defense said.
Only three days remain for U.S.-led forces to evacuate from the Taliban-held Afghanistan, after US allies failed to persuade US President Joe Biden to extend the Aug 31 evacuation deadline during a Group of Seven virtual summit earlier this week.
HELSINKI: Finland’s evacuation operation in Afghanistan ended late Friday night when persons responsible for the security of Finnish Embassy personnel were successfully sent to Kabul airport, the country’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs said.
The total number of security guards and their family members is 83. The group got on a flight away from the Afghan capital early on Saturday morning, the ministry said in a press release.
To date, Finland has evacuated a total of 413 people from Afghanistan, it said.
According to Finnish national broadcaster Yle, the evacuated include Finnish citizens, Finnish permanent residents and locally hired embassy workers as well as their families. Evacuees also include people working with the European Union and NATO missions.
The ministry noted that Finland’s evacuation operation in Afghanistan completed when the ministry’s relief team and the Defence Forces’ unit tasked in ensuring the efforts had left Kabul.
The Finnish Defence Forces announced that the Finnish troops who supported evacuation efforts in Kabul arrived in Finland on Saturday morning. The troops were sent to Afghanistan about one week ago.
The ministry said that it will continue to provide assistance to Finnish citizens and permanent residents of Finland in Afghanistan to the extent possible.
In Portugal, another 37 Afghan refugees evacuated from Kabul landed in Lisbon on Saturday, reported the Lusa news agency. Portugal already on Friday received 24 Afghan citizens who have collaborated with the Portuguese forces in Afghanistan in recent years. — NNN-XINHUA
