End of the airlift: evacuation – last Bundeswehr machine started in Kabul



Update
End of the airlift

Evacuation – last Bundeswehr machine started in Kabul

The rescue mission of the Bundeswehr is over. The last three machines have left Kabul. One of the reasons for the end of the mission are increasingly dramatic security warnings. In total, the German soldiers helped more than 5000 people out of the country.

The last machines of the Bundeswehr to rescue Germans and local employees from Afghanistan have taken off. The last three planes took off in the early evening (local time) from Kabul airport with the destination Tashkent in Uzbekistan. This is reported by several media citing security groups. On the last day of the eleven-day mission, the German Armed Forces once again took people in need of protection and soldiers out of the country on four flights.

Three machines are expected back in Germany on Friday. The Bundeswehr is currently planning a reception with a return roll call at the Wunstorf air base in Lower Saxony.

Bundeswehr Inspector General Eberhard Zorn said that the Bundeswehr had flown out 5200 people from 45 nations since the start of the mission on August 16. Among them are 4200 Afghans and 505 German citizens. Two helicopters that had been transported to Kabul for the evacuation operations have already been brought back to Tashkent in Uzbekistan. The Bundeswehr hub for evacuation is located there.

At the same time, Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer had warned of an ever-increasing threat of terror around the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. “We know that the terror threats have intensified massively, that they have become much more specific,” she said in Berlin. In the evening (local time) there was the first suicide attack in front of the airport, with several dead.

Kramp-Karrenbauer said they were working “feverishly” on the further evacuation, but had to take into account the terrorist threat. The minister stressed that efforts are being made to “phase two” of the evacuation after the end of the Bundeswehr mission “without a break”. In this phase it will be a matter of trying diplomatic channels to enable people to leave the country. A Taliban negotiator had assured the German emissary in Doha that this would be the case the day before.

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