Over 700 Indians evacuated from Afghanistan so far

New Delhi, Aug 23: With six flights of the Indian Air Force and Air India undertaking missions in Afghanistan, the number of Indians evacuated from the war torn country has crossed 700.

Two more flights would be flying into Kabul today to evacuate more Indians. The evacuation mission began from August 16 onwards and in extremely tough conditions, scores of Indians were evacuated from Afghanistan that was taken over by the Taliban earlier this month.

The operation to bring back those stranded from Afghanistan was monitored by External Affairs Minister, S Jaishankar and National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval. The first C17 had 40 Indians, while the second one comprised 100 which included Rudrendra Tandon, the Indian envoy to Afghanistan.

Sources tell OneIndia that there were several checkpoints that had to be manouvered. While most of them were being manned by the Taliban, there were some which had rogue elements. The problem was with these rogue elements who could have been detrimental to the operation to get the Indians out, the source cited above also said.

India also coordinated with several countries to ensure that this operation was a success. The other issues was that the Kabul Airport had no space and hence the C17 had to be parked for a while at Tajikistan.

As the operations began the C17 was flown from the airbase at Ayni from time to time. The C17 had to be diverted due to the turmoil on the ground at the Kabul airport. There were numerous countries which were trying to evacuate their citizens as a result of which the Kabul Airport had become extremely busy.