Berlin: A new group of Afghans who had been promised refuge in Germany arrived in the country on Wednesday, the latest to escape months of limbo in Pakistan.

An interior ministry spokesman told AFP that 28 Afghans landed at Hanover airport in the early afternoon.

The Afghans were accepted under a refugee scheme set up by the previous German government which was frozen after conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz took office in May.

Since then around 2,000 Afghans have been stuck in Pakistan, where they have been threatened with deportation back to Afghanistan.

Some of those affected have mounted successful legal challenges against the German government, forcing the authorities to allow them entry.

A first group of 47 Afghans who won their cases arrived in Germany earlier this month, and those who came on Wednesday had also been successful in the courts.

According to the initiative Airbridge Kabul, set up to help those affected, the latest group — five men, 10 women and 13 children — arrived on a commercial flight from Islamabad.

However, around 250 Afghans who had been waiting to go to Germany have been deported from Pakistan in recent weeks.

A foreign ministry spokesman said on Wednesday that none of them has as yet been able to return to Pakistan.

The German scheme was aimed at Afghans who had worked with German forces in Afghanistan or who were deemed at particular risk from the Taliban, for example journalists, lawyers and human rights activists.

Since Merz’s conservative-led coalition government took power in May, it has put the process on ice as part of a wider push to toughen immigration policy.

Thousands of Afghans waiting in Pakistan to resettle in the United States and several other Western countries are facing a similar predicament as sentiment toward refugees hardens.

Pakistan has been mounting its own crackdown on Afghans without residence permits since 2023, with officials insisting the country cannot be a “transit camp” for those waiting to resettle in the West.