- What is happening now is terrible and is happening at a speed that no one could have foreseen, Ann Linde says at a press conference on Sunday afternoon.

As recently as last Friday, the Foreign Minister said that evacuation was not relevant at the moment.

The next day it was announced that the staff will be limited to a minimum - and now the Swedish embassy is being evacuated.

"Opportunity to work disappeared"

This was after a US message was issued at 10 o'clock on Sunday morning urging all foreign diplomats to evacuate immediately.

- The Taliban's entry into Kabul and the imminent closure of the so-called green zone in Kabul means that the opportunity for the embassy to work disappeared, Linde says.

The embassy's operations will now be conducted from Stockholm.

- All seconded staff will be out by tomorrow at the latest, says Ann Linde.

According to the Foreign Minister, the forms of Sweden's aid to Afghanistan will also be reviewed.

But she does not want to say that the operation in Afghanistan has failed.

Changes in the quota refugee system

Minister of Defense Peter Hultqvist (S) and Minister of Justice Morgan Johansson (S) also attended the press conference.

The latter talked about the evacuation of both Swedish personnel and locally employed Afghan personnel and how it should be possible to carry it out as quickly as possible.

- The conditions have changed only in recent hours.

But we still have to secure the forms to be able to do this, says Johansson.

In the first instance, the so-called quota refugee system will be used to provide protection to current and former local employees and their families.

In order for this to be possible, the government has had to make changes to the regulations during the day.

- The government decision that was taken is, among other things, that we temporarily remove the requirement that you must be in a third country.

This means that the Swedish Migration Agency can now decide on resettlement as soon as the flight has left Afghanistan, says Morgan Johansson.

The limit for the number of emergency rooms, the resettlement quota, of 500 people is also removed temporarily to provide space to evacuate more.