Kabul, Afghanistan – Taliban authorities in Afghanistan have allowed a flight carrying Americans and other foreign nationals out of Kabul, U.S. and Qatar officials said Thursday. The departure of the plane, which landed safely in Doha, Qatar, was the first flight from the airport since US forces withdrew from the country.
The group of about 115 passengers, including about 20 Americans and their families and other Westerners, departed on a Qatar Airways flight that had previously carried humanitarian aid into the country, officials said. From the tarmac of Kabul International Airport, Mutlaq bin Majed al-Qahtani, a Qatari special envoy, said the flight would take off with Americans and Westerners.
“Say it any way, a charter or a commercial flight, everyone has tickets and boarding passes,” he said, adding that another commercial flight would take off on Friday. “Hopefully, life is normalizing in Afghanistan.”
Qatari officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity before the formal announcement, put the number of U.S. citizens on the flight between 100 and 150, but a U.S. official told CBS’s Margaret Brennan News that the Taliban had agreed to let go 200 people in total, including Americans and “other foreigners.”
The official said the United States was pressuring the Taliban to release more people this week, but no agreement had yet been reached on a group of Americans and Afghans stranded in Mazar-i-Sharif, north of Kabul. .
Asked about the flight plans, a State Department spokesman would only tell CBS News that the U.S. government’s efforts to help Americans and others “with whom we have a special commitment” continued, but that it was not he could share no detail.
Bernat Armangue / AP
The departure of a group of Americans for the first time since the U.S. ended its frantic airlift in late August would indicate that U.S. officials have reached an agreement with the new Taliban rulers, with whom conversations have continued.
In the last few days there had been one confrontation between the Taliban and organizers of several charter planes hoping to evacuate Americans and Afghans at risk from Mazar-i-Sharif. The Taliban have said they would drop off passengers with valid travel documents, but many of the northern airports did not have these papers.
Earlier this week, the U.S. State Department said that An American family of four had been allowed to flee the country on a land border, but there was growing concern about Americans and Afghans stranded and trying to get out of the airport about 260 kilometers north of Kabul.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that it is still believed that there are “about 100” American citizens who want to escape Afghanistan and that the US government is communicating with all of them. .