Last British evacuation flight has departed Kabul airport in Afghanistan on Saturday.
Gatekeepers News reports that the UK has ended its flight evacuation of civilians from Afghanistan as a top military officer acknowledged that “we haven’t been able to bring everybody out.”
British ambassador to Afghanistan, Laurie Bristow, while speaking from Kabul airport, said it was “time to close this phase of the operation.”
“It’s time to close this phase of the operation down but we haven’t forgotten the people who still need to leave, and we will do everything we can to help them,” he said in a statement released by the Foreign Ministry.
Britain said it has evacuated over 14,500 people from Kabul in the past two weeks but that as many as 1,100 Afghans who were entitled to come to the U.K. have been left behind.
“We haven’t been able to bring everybody out, and that has been heartbreaking, and there have been some very challenging judgments that have had to be made on the ground,” the head of British armed forces, Gen. Nick Carter, told the BBC.
Gatekeepers News reports that in the early hours of Saturday, a Royal Air Force plane carrying U.K. diplomatic staff and soldiers touched ground at the RAF Brize Norton airbase northwest of London. The troops from the 16 Air Assault Brigade were part of a contingent of 1,000 British soldiers who have been based in Kabul to assist in the airlift.
