World
UK follows France in ending civilian evacuations from Afghanistan
Few hours after France's announcement, the United Kingdom on Saturday announced the end of civilian airlifts from Kabul airport as the Taliban deployed more forces around the Hamid Karzai International Airport to prevent crowds from gathering.
The emergency evacuations followed a suicide bombing that killed 182 people outside the airport.
Britain's ambassador to Afghanistan, Laurie Bristow, said on Saturday that the time had come to end an airlift that had evacuated almost 15,000 Afghan and British citizens over the past two weeks.
"It's time to close this phase of the operation down but we haven't forgotten the people who still need to leave, and we will do everything we can to help them," he said in a statement at Kabul airport released by Britain's foreign ministry.
The announcement came hours after French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Defence Minister Florence Parly said France’s airlift had to be stopped late Friday due because "the security conditions were no longer being met at the airport" in the wake of Thursday's attack, which killed 169 Afghan civilians and 13 US troops.
In a statement, Le Drian and Parly blamed the lack of security on the "rapid disengagement of the American forces".
Separately, Parly tweeted that the French forces had managed to fly around 3,000 people out of Afghanistan before their airlift operation was halted.
"In less than two weeks, the French military has brought some 3,000 people to safety, including more than 2,600 Afghans," she tweeted.
The French embassy team in Kabul has reached Abu Dhabi and from there will fly home to France, the ministers said.
France has called for setting up humanitarian operations to assist the thousands of Afghan nationals who failed to get a flight out to leave by other means.
"Our efforts continue," the two ministers said. A French delegation met Thursday with Taliban representatives with the talks centring on the situation at the Kabul airport and the airlift operations, the ministers said.
SOURCE: AGENCIES