First Post-Evacuation Flight Has Taken Off From Afghanistan

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry says the first international commercial flight to leave Afghanistan since the withdrawal of U.S. troops departed Thursday, which has helped open the airport in Kabul.

Speaking in Islamabad, Qatari Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said the airport “has been tested and operationalised in the past few days,”.

A large group of foreigners were aboard the Doha-bound flight, Al Jazeera television reported. The Qatar Airways plane had arrived in Kabul earlier on Thursday carrying aid, it said.

Although international flights have gone in and out with officials, technicians and aid, this was the first such civilian flight since the evacuation which followed the Taliban’s seizure of the capital on Aug. 15 as foreign military forces pulled out.

A U.S. official had said earlier that 200 foreigners in Afghanistan, Americans among them, were set to depart on charter flights from Kabul on Thursday after the new Taliban government agreed to their evacuation,

Qatari and Turkish technical teams had helped restore operations at the airport, from where 124,000 foreigners and at-risk Afghans were evacuated by U.S.-led forces in the fraught days after the Taliban takeover.

Qatari special envoy Mutlaq bin Majed Al Qahtani described the flight out of Kabul on Thursday as a regular flight and not an evacuation and that there would also be a flight on Friday.

The White House confirmed on Thursday that US citizens and legal permanent residents were on the chartered Qatar Airways flight and thanked Doha for its role in facilitating operations at the airport.

National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne said in a statement that the safe flight was the result of careful and hard diplomacy and engagement.