The evacuation of diplomats, foreigners and Afghans who worked with them continues at Kabul International Airport, as the US military announced that 7,000 people have been evacuated so far since the Taliban took control of the capital last Sunday, while the foreign ministers of the Group of Seven countries urged yesterday, Thursday, the Taliban to provide safe passage for people who They are trying to leave the country.

A US military official expressed the military's readiness to double its airlift operations and increase "the capacity of each aircraft to the maximum extent possible" to evacuate as many people as possible.

General Hank Taylor also said during a press conference that about 12,000 people have been evacuated since the end of last July, including American citizens, members of the American embassy, ​​and Afghans who worked for the United States and requested a special immigrant visa to flee the country for fear of reprisals from the Taliban.


Britain and other countries

In turn, the United Kingdom has evacuated 306 Britons and 2,052 Afghans, according to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and Germany has evacuated 500 people, according to the German Foreign Ministry, including 189 Germans, 202 Afghans, 59 EU nationals and 51 people from other countries.

And the bulk of the people who sought refuge in the French embassy in Kabul became in a safe place after the French army evacuated the night of Tuesday / Wednesday, 216 people at noon Wednesday, and they are 184 Afghans "from civil society in need of protection", 25 French, four Dutch, Irish and two Kenyans.

And on Wednesday, a third flight took off from Kabul Airport, bound for Abu Dhabi, according to what the French Minister of the Armed Forces, Florence Parly, announced.

The plane carried 138 people, including 13 French and 124 Afghanis, in addition to a passenger whose nationality was not specified.

On Tuesday, 41 French citizens and foreigners were taken out in the same way through the "Abagan" operation, which is being carried out by two French Air Force planes on the Kabul-Emirates route and two other planes on the Emirates-France route.


Understandings with the Taliban

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the US military is maintaining contact with the Taliban to ensure that vulnerable Afghans and special visa applicants, and other Afghan nationals, are able to cross and leave the country.

Kirby indicated - in a press conference held on Thursday evening - that there are understandings with the movement to facilitate access to Hamid Karzai International Airport in the capital, Kabul, adding that the US forces did not monitor the Taliban obstructing the movement of American citizens to Kabul Airport, and that the evacuation process is going well.

Kirby said that armed US fighter jets were flying over Kabul to ensure the necessary security for the evacuations there, noting that they were not flying at "low" altitudes over the city, but were participating in "monitoring".

For his part, Maj. Gen. William Taylor, of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that several gates at the airport are currently open, and that about seven thousand people have so far been evacuated.

He said that the US military currently has forces of more than 5,200 personnel at Kabul airport to protect the evacuation operations, through which the United States is looking to evacuate more than 30,000 Americans and Afghans.

However, the second official in the US State Department, Wendy Sherman, said that the Taliban allow Americans to reach the Kabul airport, but it appears that they "prevent Afghans who want to leave the country from reaching the airport."

Sherman added that the United States expects them to "allow all American citizens, all third-country nationals, and all Afghans to leave, if they wish, in a safe and unmolested manner."

She added that the United States "expects them to allow all American citizens, all third-country nationals, and all Afghans to leave if they wish in a safe and unmolested manner."


safe passage

On Thursday, the foreign ministers of the Group of Seven nations urged the Taliban to secure safe passage for people trying to leave Kabul, in the group's first official comment on the crisis in Afghanistan.

According to a British Foreign Office statement, the ministers "called on the Taliban to ensure safe passage for foreign nationals and Afghans wishing to leave."

The statement added that the G7 countries "continue to make efforts to do everything possible to evacuate vulnerable people from Kabul airport."

The group's ministers expressed "grave concern over reports of violent reprisals" and "discussed the importance of the international community providing safe and legal resettlement routes."

The ministers agreed to "seek to reach a comprehensive political settlement, secure life-saving humanitarian support and assistance in Afghanistan and the region, and prevent further loss of life in Afghanistan and the world as a result of terrorism."


Russian show

In this context, Russia offered Thursday to other countries to help it evacuate its citizens and Afghan citizens from the capital, Kabul.

In a press briefing, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that in order to prevent the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, Moscow "is ready to provide Russian civil aviation services to ensure the transfer of any number of Afghan citizens, including women and children, to any foreign countries that will express their interest in receiving and housing them."

She added that the offer also includes assistance in transporting citizens of some foreign countries, noting that there is a "inability of a number of Western countries to organize the evacuation of their diplomats, soldiers and civilian nationals, not to mention the Afghans who cooperated with them and their families."

For his part, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called Thursday for "a national dialogue that would allow the formation of a representative government."

He stressed that "the Taliban does not control all of the Afghan territory."

He referred to a resistance movement against the Taliban that is trying to organize its ranks in the Panjshir Valley, northeast of Kabul, led by Vice President Amrullah Saleh and Ahmed Masoud, son of the leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was assassinated by al-Qaeda in 2001.