Washington/Kabul : US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday praised Qatar for providing transit to US Air Force planes bringing US citizens and Afghan nationals from Kabul, even as the US military was forced to pause its evacuation flights from the Afghan capital due the Doha airport facilities hitting capacity.
“Spoke yesterday with Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Qatar, @MBA_AlThani about Afghanistan and Qatar’s generous support to safely transit U.S. citizens, Embassy Kabul personnel, and at-risk Afghans through Doha. We commend Qatar for its efforts to promote regional security,” Blinken tweeted.
In Kabul, thousands of US nationals and their families and tens of thousands of Afghans continued to flood the airport, despite Taliban putting restrictions, all desperate to leave the country following the Taliban takeover.
The US military was forced on Friday to pause its evacuation flights out of Kabul as the current processing facility in Doha had hit capacity. Meanwhile, a new flight option to a base in Bahrain has opened, giving the US more space to fly out people from Kabul.
CBS reported that chaotic scenes continued at the US-controlled airport in Kabul with hundreds of desperate Afghans still gathering — despite Taliban warnings and violence — in hopes of escaping the Taliban regime. Gunfire was heard on Friday as Taliban gunmen tried to disperse the crowds.
But the situation in Doha, where the US military evacuation flights have been landing, got bad with hundreds of Afghans who arrived on the flights being put up in hangars, with single toilets.
A US military official told CBS News that flights were put on hold due to the need to find and open up facilities in other countries to handle those being flown out of Kabul.
On Friday, the US reached an agreement with the government of Bahrain to let American military planes start flying evacuees from Kabul to the Isa Air Base.
Flights to Bahrain are expected to start landing soon. The base has the capacity to temporarily shelter up to 1,000 people, and the Bahraini authorities gave the US permission to keep people there for onward processing for up to 14 days.
The US State Department is actively seeking other facilities beyond the bases in Qatar and Bahrain to process evacuees.
The cavernous hangar at the al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, being used by US Customs and Border Protection staff to process fleeing Afghans and American nationals, had reached capacity by Friday morning, and conditions inside the building were uncomfortable.
CBS quoted a person at the base in Doha as saying that about 2,000 Afghans and US citizens were crowded into the building. He said it was hot, and many people were waiting for hours for food, but that he and the others who had made it that far were grateful to the US, and relieved to be out of Kabul.
Senior US border protection officials were busy screening Afghans in Doha to clear them for travel on to military bases in the US.
In Kabul, the main route out of Afghanistan, the Hamid Karzai International Airport, remained a scene of despair, with thousands pushing, waiting, and longing for a flight out of Taliban ruled Afghanistan.
US forces have so far evacuated around 12,700 people from Kabul’s airport since Saturday, mostly US citizens and Afghans who once worked for the U.S.
Earlier in the week, President Biden estimated that there were between 60 and 80,000 people still wanting evacuation, including Americans, their families and vulnerable Afghans.
