Aircraft landed at Schiphol with 180 evacuees from Kabul | Inland

The first group of 35 Dutch people evacuated from Afghanistan landed at Schiphol on Wednesday evening. Earlier in the day, they were able to board a C-17 aircraft in Kabul that is used by several NATO countries. On the way, a stop was made in the Georgian capital Tbilisi. Evacuees are being pulled from Afghanistan after the radical Islamist Taliban have seized power there.

Defense has an airlift for evacuation flights from Kabul. People are taken from Afghanistan to a safe country in the region and from there the evacuees go to the Netherlands with a larger aircraft. According to the schedule, there will be a flight back and forth to a safe airport three times a day. The Ministry of Defense has two C-130 transport aircraft available for this purpose. One of them has been faulty since Thursday.

In the night from Thursday to Friday, there was an evacuation flight from Kabul with 53 people on board, including a Dutchman, Defense reported earlier Friday. On Thursday, 79 people had already been collected from Kabul, including nine Dutchmen. On Friday, outgoing Minister of Foreign Affairs Sigrid Kaag said that there are still more than seven hundred Dutch people in Afghanistan.

The Netherlands is not only evacuating Dutch people from Afghanistan, but also Afghans who helped the Dutch mission in the country and are now in danger. These are, for example, cooks, guards or drivers. The Netherlands is also evacuating citizens of other countries, such as Germany. From the stopover they are taken to their destination country by other flights.

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