Photo: WAKIL KOHSAR / AFP / Getty Images
By: EFE
Sunday, September 22
US completes transfer of embassy staff to Kabul airport in Afghanistan
The United States has completed the transfer to Kabul airport of all personnel from its US embassy in Afghanistan, hours after starting an aerial evacuation from that complex that was reminiscent of the one carried out during the fall of Saigon in 1975.
Late on Sunday in Washington, and when 6 o’clock was approaching: 00 Monday morning in Kabul, the State Department confirmed that it had “completed” the process to transport to the airport at approximately 4, 00 0 employees of your embassy in Kabul .
“All the embassy personnel are now located in the facilities of the Hamid Karzai international airport, whose perimeter is protected by the m US military personnel, ”State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a brief note.
The American flag was removed from the US embassy complex and moved along with the staff to a “safe place” , and the charge d’affaires in the country, Ross Wilson, is also at the airport, another source from the State Department explained to Efe.
The complex airport transfer operation was picked up by television cameras, which captured helicopters going to and from the US embassy to the airport, while Kabul was besieged and then controlled by the Taliban.
The head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, insisted on Sunday that the situation in Kabul it was not like Saigon in 1975 , weighing r that in that city there was an aerial evacuation of embassy personnel in Vietnam that was practically identical to that of Kabul, with helicopters on the roof.
The United States plans to evacuate most of its embassy staff in Kabul from Afghanistan, leaving only a “minimal diplomatic presence” made up of Wilson and a few other advisers in the country, according to the State Department.
The Pentagon spokesman, John Kirby, assured Efe this Sunday that the United States has already evacuated “several hundred civilians, including personnel (from its embassy ) and US citizens ”who were in Afghanistan.
To reinforce that operation, the Pentagon authorized this Sunday the shipment of 1, 04 0 more soldiers to Kabul, which means that, within 48 hours, there will be “approximately 6, 00 0 ”US military at the airport in the Afghan capital, Kirby confirmed.
What’s more, US forces have “taken over” the reins of air traffic control at Kabul airport, to facilitate their evacuations and those of their allies, and commercial aircraft traffic there continues, the spokesperson added.
Continue Reading: USA. takes control of the Kabul airport traffic in Afghanistan for evacuations