Dozens of Westerners board commercial flight from Kabul

KABUL, Afghanistan — Dozens of foreigners, including Americans, boarded a commercialized formation astatine Kabul airdrome connected Thursday successful the archetypal large-scale evacuation since U.S and NATO forces near Afghanistan precocious past month.

Their departure marked a important breakthrough successful the bumpy coordination betwixt the U.S. and Afghanistan’s caller Taliban rulers.

The Taliban person said they would fto foreigners and Afghans with valid question documents leave, but a days-long standoff implicit charter planes astatine different airdrome had formed immoderate uncertainty connected Taliban assurances.

The Taliban had said it would fto travelers permission if they were successful possession of due question documents, though astir astatine the airdrome did not person specified papers.

Thursday’s Qatar Airways formation is heading to Doha.

Mutlaq bin Majed al-Qahtani, a Qatari peculiar envoy, said the formation would permission with Americans and Westerners.

“Call it what you want, a charter oregon a commercialized flight, everyone has tickets and boarding passes,” helium said, adding that different commercialized formation would instrumentality disconnected connected Friday. “Hopefully, beingness is becoming mean successful Afghanistan.”

After the U.S. concluded evacuation efforts connected Aug. 31, the State Department confirmed that up to 200 Americans who had antecedently expressed a willingness to permission Afghanistan remained successful the country.

Sec. of State Antony Blinken pointed retired that galore of those Americans had families successful Afghanistan and whitethorn person re-thought their determination to leave. Still, helium expressed that the U.S. would inactive beryllium committed to helping them permission done diplomatic means.