Taliban let plane carrying Americans and other foreign nationals leave Kabul

Kabul, Afghanistan – Afghan Taliban authorities have allowed a flight carrying Americans and other foreign nationals to leave Kabul, US and Qatari officials said Thursday. The departure of the plane, which landed safely in Doha, Qatar, marked the first such flight from the airport since the withdrawal of US forces from the country.

The group of around 115 passengers, including some 20 Americans and their families as well as other Westerners, left on a Qatar Airways flight that had previously delivered humanitarian aid to the country, officials said. From the tarmac at Kabul International Airport, Mutlaq bin Majed al-Qahtani, a special envoy from Qatar, said the flight would depart with Americans and Westerners.

“Call it what you want, a charter flight or a commercial flight, everyone has tickets and boarding passes,” he said, adding that another commercial flight would take off on Friday. “I hope life will return to normal in Afghanistan.”

Qatari officials, who requested anonymity before the official announcement, estimated the number of US nationals on the flight at 100-150, but a US official told CBS News’s Margaret Brennan that the Taliban had agreed to let from 200 people. in total, including Americans and “other foreigners.”

The official said the United States was urging the Taliban to let more people leave this week, but no deal had yet been reached regarding a group of Americans and Afghans stranded in Mazar-i-Sharif, north of Kabul.

When asked about the flight plans, a State Department spokesperson only told CBS News that efforts by the US government to help Americans and others “to whom we have a special commitment” were underway, but that ‘no details could be shared.

The departure of a group of Americans for the first time since the United States completed its frenzied airlift in late August would signal that US officials have reached an agreement with the new Taliban leadership, with whom talks have continued. .

In the last few days there had been a standoff between the Taliban and the organizers of several charter planes who had hoped to evacuate Americans and Afghans at risk from Mazar-i-Sharif. The Taliban said they would let passengers leave with valid travel documents, but many of those at the northern airport did not have such papers.

Earlier this week, the US State Department said that a American family of four allowed to flee the country over a land border, but there was growing concern for Americans and Afghans stranded and trying to leave the airport about 260 miles north of Kabul.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that there would still be “a hundred” US citizens wishing to escape Afghanistan, and that the US government was communicating with each of them.