A transport plane carrying 35 Dutch evacuees from Afghanistan landed at Schiphol around 23.00 p.m. on Wednesday evening. The plane left the Afghan capital Kabul earlier in the day and made a stopover in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, on the way.
The aircraft, a C-17, is used by several NATO countries. The plane was initially expected to be around 21.15:XNUMX p.m., but the flight was delayed. In addition to the Dutch, sixteen people with a Belgian passport, two with a German passport and two with a British passport were on board. These people have been expelled from Afghanistan now that the radical Islamist Taliban have seized power.
Wednesday morning it was announced that the first Dutchmen had been removed from the country. About ten of them were able to leave with, among other things, a German flight. France reported that four Dutchmen had left Kabul on a French flight. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, about fifty Dutch people have now been returned from Afghanistan.
Embassy team
On Tuesday evening, a plane sent by the Netherlands arrived in Kabul, but it was not possible to get Dutch people on board. There would have been too little time and the Americans did not allow Afghans at the airport, so that interpreters and their families could not reach the plane, for example. The plane had to leave after half an hour. A plane that was sent Monday evening was not cleared to land.
Earlier on Wednesday, a replacement Dutch embassy team arrived at Kabul airport. It concerns the ambassador, a consular emergency team and 62 soldiers for protection. The group must facilitate evacuations to the Netherlands at the airport. The Dutch embassy staff left the Afghan capital in a hurry on Monday due to imminent danger. It is not yet clear whether the device that dropped off the new embassy team will take evacuees with it when they leave Kabul.
Also read: Kaag: too little time to get people on an evacuation flight
