A human drama unfolds in Kabul, from where many Afghans are trying to escape Taliban.
If the US withdraws from Afghanistan as scheduled on August 31, the flyover created by France to evacuate will be completed the day after tomorrow, a senior French official said today, while Spain warned that some who wished it would not be possible to evacuate.
If the USA to achieve their goal of having fully retired on August 31, “for us this means that our business ends on Thursday night. “Therefore, we have three days left,” explained the director of the Foreign Minister’s office, Nicolas Ross, to Prime Minister Jean Castex, in the presence of journalists.
Following the fall of Kabul on August 15, which is now in the hands of the Taliban, France set up an airlift to evacuate the threatened French and Afghans. Nearly 2,000 people have already left the country by this flyover.
The Foreign Ministry has identified 62 more French nationals to be evacuated, while numerous Afghans have also asked to leave and authorities are considering their demands.
During his visit to the State Department’s Crisis and Support Center (CDCS), Castex stressed the need to “distinguish urgent needs, those that require prompt responses, from the rest.”
The CDCS has received almost 120,000 calls since the beginning of the flyover and “90% to 95% of those calls are from Afghans who have fled to France and are worried about their families,” according to the ministry.
However, “all this can stop at any time (…) We do not know how much time we still have at our disposal,” said a French source speaking to the French Agency, as relayed by the Athens News Agency.
In the meantime, in Madrid, The Spanish government warned today that some people who want to leave Afghanistan will not be able to do so due to the “truly dramatic” situation on the ground.
“We will remove as many people as possible, (but) there will be people who will stay there for reasons that do not depend on us, but on the situation there,” Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles told Cadena Ser.
Afghanistan: “Taliban are becoming more aggressive, there are shootings”
“It is a very frustrating situation for the whole world, because, even for those who manage to get to Kabul, access to the airport is extremely difficult,” said Robles, stressing that there are still “many people” who want to leave the country.
«“The Taliban are becoming more aggressive, there are shootings, there is a more obvious state of violence, the controls are getting tougher every time (…) the situation is really dramatic and it is getting worse day by day because people know that time is running out.”, he added.
The Spanish minister, however, assured that “we will try until the end” to carry out these removals.
Like many other countries, Spain has built an airlift to evacuate thousands of people from Afghanistan. It uses military planes to transport these people from Kabul to Dubai, where commercial aircraft chartered from Madrid take them to Spain. A total of 710 people have already landed in Spain.
Another 420 people are expected to arrive today, 290 already in Dubai and 130 who will leave Kabul in the next few hours by military plane, the minister said.
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