UK, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan evacuate citizens, Afghans from Kabul

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday that the UK was focused on evacuating its citizens from Kabul. The prime minister also said that the UK would also evacuate Afghans who provided assistance to the UK mission in Kabul. He said the UK had already secured the return of more than 300 of its citizens and 2,052 Afghans.

“Our immediate focus must be on helping those to whom we have direct obligations by evacuating UK nationals together with those Afghans who have assisted our efforts over the past 20 years. “We have so far secured the safe return of 306 UK nationals and 2,052 Afghan nationals as part of our resettlement programme,” Johnson told the parliament. Similarly, a Kazakh air force plane Wednesday evacuated 42 people, including 16 foreigners, from Afghanistan, the country’s Defense Ministry said.

“Today at 17:00 pm (11:00 GMT), the military transport aircraft C-295 of Kazakh air force safely landed in Almaty with 42 passengers evacuated from Afghanistan,” the ministry said. It added that 25 Kazakh citizens, 14 Kyrgyz citizens, one Russian and one Latvian were also evacuated. Meanwhile, Uzbekistan is assisting the evacuation of German citizens and Afghans who provided technical services for the German embassy, according to the Uzbek Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Uzbek Foreign Affairs ministry disclosed this in a statement on Wednesday.

“In line with agreements, the Republic of Uzbekistan is providing technical assistance to the Federal Republic of Germany in the process of evacuating German citizens and technical staffers providing services to the German diplomatic mission in Afghanistan from among Afghan citizens,” it said.

According to the ministry, all the evacuated people will remain in the transit zone of the Tashkent airport until their departure for Germany.