ISLAMABAD: Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has evacuated some 1,400 people from Kabul, including diplomats, journalists and officials of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Pakistan's information minister said on Saturday.
The government started a special PIA flight operation to help evacuate stranded people of various nationalities soon after the Taliban seized the Afghan on Aug. 15.
"PIA evacuated around 1,400 passengers from Kabul," Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said in a video message. "Most of these people who were evacuated were either journalists or members of international financial groups like IMF, World Bank, also people from embassies."
"Pakistan embassy in Kabul is playing a pivotal role in (the Afghan) evacuation process. Up till now, about 4,000 visas have been issued by our embassy and more than 2,000 people have been evacuated through PIA and other flights."
The operation was temporarily suspended on Saturday over security concerns at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.
“We have halted our today’s operation, though a proper decision in this regard is expected later today after a high-level consultation with the government,” Abdullah Hafeez Khan, a PIA spokesperson, told Arab News.
"There are serious security issues, and we can’t take any risk."
Listing the missing facilities at the Kabul airport that could lead to a mishap, he said garbage was dumped on the terminal and officials handling stairs, towbar and air traffic were also missing from the facility.
PIA chief executive Arshad Malik visited the Kabul airport on Friday to review the security situation and hold meetings with top NATO officials, as US and NATO troops took the charge of the airport where thousands of desperate Afghans and other foreign nationals congregated as the Taliban insurgents started rolling into Kabul.
“We have been flying from the Kabul airport by taking permission from the NATO (troops deployed over there), but the issue is that the NATO forces won’t be there after a couple of days and it’s not clear what will happen then,” Khan said.
The country’s envoy to Afghanistan Mansoor Ahmad Khan said in a Twitter post on Saturday that as countries try to pull out their citizens from the war-battered Afghanistan, the Pakistani embassy was now sending a group of 57 Pakistanis, including women and children, by road to their country via the Torkham border crossing.