IAF's evacuation flight takes off from Kabul with 85 Indians on board: Reports

Kabul: Amid ongoing efforts to evacuate Indian citizens stranded in Afghanistan, an Air Force C-130J transport aircraft left Kabul on the morning of Saturday, 21 August, with over 85 Indians on board, reported NDTV. The plane landed safely in Dushanbe, Tajikistan for refuelling.

The government is focused on bringing as many Indians inside Kabul airport's premises as possible, as chaos outside the airport continues. The report added that another larger IAF plane, the C-17 transport aircraft, is on standby for Kabul and will be able to bring at least 150 Indians back home as soon as they reach the airport.

Speaking to a Home Ministry official, NDTV reported that India has successfully evacuated all embassy staff but about a thousand Indians are still in Afghanistan, scattered across cities in the country.

They added that locating these citizens and the condition that they are in is turning out to be challenge, as not all of them had registered with the embassy in Kabul.

As per the report, nearly a fifth of the people still awaiting evacuation are Hindus and Sikhs waiting in Kabul, who have taken refuge at a gurudwara.

On 15 August, two IAF C-17 Globemasters landed in Kabul as the Taliban took over, evacuating Indian diplomats and embassy staff, including Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) personnel and a few journalists.

Foreign Minister S Jaishankar called the first evacuation a "difficult and complicated" exercise, as thousands of Afghans were desperately trying to flee the Taliban's forces.

Before that, an Air India commercial flight had evacuated 129 people from Kabul's international airport.

Additionally, the Air Force had previously evacuated 50 consulate staffers and personnel from Mazar-e-Sharif a few days before the Taliban took over the city.

While the Taliban's political office in Qatar urged the Indian government to reconsider evacuations, assuring that they need not fear attack from militant groups like Jaish or Lashkar, the Indian government continued its efforts regardless, having received inputs of possible attacks by the outfits.