Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
The last dedicated flight purely for the evacuation effort from Afghanistan has left Kabul, Britain’s Ministry of Defence has confirmed.
Further flights leaving from the airport would be able to carry evacuees but would also be transporting UK diplomatic staff and military personnel as the operation winds down.
It comes as British ambassador to Afghanistan Laurie Bristow said it was “time to close this phase” of the evacuation effort.
In a video posted on Twitter, Bristow – who has remained in Afghanistan processing those who needed to leave the country – said: “The team here have been working until the very last moment to evacuate British nationals, Afghans and others at risk.
Nearly 15,000 British nationals, Afghan staff and others at risk have been evacuated from Kabul since Operation Pitting began - our commitment to the people of Afghanistan will endure. pic.twitter.com/zUQ52ps1cE
— Laurie Bristow (@laurie_bristow) August 28, 2021
“Since the 13th of August, we’ve brought nearly 15,000 people to safety, and about 1,000 military, diplomatic, civilian personnel have worked on Operation Pitting in Kabul, many, many more elsewhere.
“Thursday’s terrorist attack was a reminder of the difficult and dangerous conditions in which Operation Pitting has been done. And sadly I attended here yesterday the ceremony to pay our respects to the 13 US soldiers who died.
“It’s time to close this phase of the operation now, but we haven’t forgotten the people who still need to leave. We’ll continue to do everything we can to help them. Nor have we forgotten the brave, decent people of Afghanistan. They deserve to live in peace and security.”
General Nick Carter, the Chief of the Defence Staff, said Operation Pitting – the effort to evacuate UK nationals and eligible Afghans from Kabul airport – had “gone as well as it could do in the circumstances”.
On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the head of the UK armed forces spoke of the “heartbreaking” judgment calls military personnel had been forced to make.
“We haven’t been able to bring everybody out and that has been heartbreaking, and there have been some very challenging judgments that have had to be made on the ground,” Carter said.
“And I think that, you know, people like me, who have had a very, very long association with this country, we are forever receiving messages and texts from our Afghan friends that are very distressing, so we’re all living this in the most painful way.”
As the evacuation flights to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire came to an end, Labour’s shadow defence secretary John Healey told Sky News: “This is the brutal truth, despite getting more than 14,000 people out, there are probably 1,000 Afghans who have worked with us over two decades in Afghanistan, helped our troops, our aid workers, our diplomats, that we promised to protect, but we’re leaving behind.
“And I know those troops in particular will feel our failure on this as a country is a betrayal of many of those who risked their own lives to work alongside us.”
Tom Tugendhat, a Tory MP who fought in Afghanistan, said he was disappointed the evacuation effort was coming to an end.
The former army officer and now chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee told BBC Breakfast: “I’m extremely sad about this and I very much hope that it might go beyond the August deadline but we found out a few days ago that it wasn’t, so I was expecting it.
“It still leaves me extremely sad that so many of my friends have been left behind.”
Questioned over whether the UK could have done better when withdrawing personnel from Afghanistan, Tugendhat said: “In the last week, probably not, but this has been a sprint finish after a not exactly sprint start.”
“There are going to be questions to be asked to the Foreign Secretary about the processing in the UK in recent weeks that we’re going to have to see what the answers are.”
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace previously admitted there were between 800 and 1,100 Afghans eligible under the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (Arap) scheme who would be left behind, while around 100 and 150 UK nationals will remain in Afghanistan, although Wallace said some of those were staying willingly.
But a number of MPs have said that based on the correspondence they had received asking for help, they thought this was an underestimation.
In the early hours of Saturday, the US military conducted an airstrike against a member of so-called Islamic State in Afghanistan who was believed to be involved in planning attacks against the US in Kabul.
The strike killed one individual, and US spokesman navy captain William Urban said they knew of no civilian casualties.
It comes after two British adults and the child of a British national – understood to be a teenager – were killed in a bombing on Thursday, with another adult and child injured.
The BBC reported a London taxi driver, Mohammad Niazi, had been killed in the Kabul attack after flying out to help his family return home, but it was not confirmed if he was one of the UK nationals referred to by the Foreign Office.
His friend Imran Niazi told Sky News that Mohammad had felt like “one of the lucky ones” after managing to get a ticket to travel.
He said: “He was that excited to help bring his family home.”
Meanwhile, The Times reported that the injured child, believed to be aged under 10, was related to one of the adults killed.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Joan Burton the peoples champion .
Don’t make me laugh.
iPhone Joan has completely lost her marbles recently.
The likelihood of her losing her seat too, shortly , has driven her temperament to the house for the bewildered.
That and the courting session that has begun between Enda & Mehole , which only confirms , that everyone now knows , that The Labour Party will be virtually nonexistent, following after the soon to be announced General Election!!!
As two faced as you can get,nothing genuine about her
Lads, why is Gerry less popular than iPhone Moanie Joanie in the opinion polls? Doesn’t make sense,
Well Empress Maria Louisa is simply looking after her support base… sure all teachers are on the Spin Feign ten cent payroll… look at them all out off the leash today… woof woof
I’d say it’s rigged!
Keep digging there iphone, everytime you open your mouth its another nail in labours coffin.
The Government are not listening to the people, they never did. When questioned by the opposition they simply ignore the question and make some silly unrelated waffle.
We are under the power of a dictatorship pure and simple, They don’t care about you or me or if your kids or mine are hungry or cold they have quangos to re fair you to for answers to those issues. They imposed a home tax and a water tax against the will of the people, Fine Gael and Labor never again Rotten shower of get rich quick opportunists.
I feel embarrassed for the people of Dublin West.
Goodbye Joan.
Let she who is without sin…..
do page 3.
Pic of Joan Burton clothed even would turn me off a newspaper for life
When the governments backs are against the wall, they seem to have only one plan: attack Sinn Féin.
Hundreds of people on trollers? Attack Sinn Féin.
Homeless people dying on our streets? Attack Sinn Féin.
Not representing the people who put them in power? Attack Sinn Féin.
The list of incompetence is endless.
*should read hundreds of people in trollies.
Not so smart iJoan burton must have requested a truthful comment about her to be deleted. What a pathetic inhumane individual. Delete away, doesn’t change the poor way she treats the people of Ireland.
As an erstwhile Labour voter – (I know, I know, but I am a working class person) – I come to bury JobBridge Joan, not to praise her. How this woman, who has connived in ,and indeed initiated, the most anti social and anti working class measures in this country since the 1920′s can criticize anyone, ANYONE, absolutely beggars belief. I hold no particular brief for Ms. McDonald, but this shameless bid to smear political opponents should not be allowed to pass unchallenged. Shame on you, you patronizing, multi pensioned baggage. LEAVE NOW, before you are dragged out of Leinster House and thrown in the gutter where you belong.
Oh, Pontius, that was a mere aside. Believe me, I have a whole lot more that I could say, but brevity being the soul…. and all that!
It is not just Joan. They all are doing it, especially when the marginalised party members speak (though it is difficult to think of SF as marginalised anymore, but in the Dail, they are). They attack the person. It is a strategy of FF/FG/Lab to attack people first and mmmmmmaybe, then, address the issue. It’s dysfunctional.
“Burton said she regularly visits both “well-off” schools and those in “poorer communities” through her job,”
Guess iJoan doesn’t visit schools in poorer communities as much as she use to, since she developed Globophobia.
If Joan Burton is saying Mary Luo is a saint then Joan must be a Satanist.
i like Mary Lou. She is a true Fianna Failer.
Bang on. What she is quoted as saying in the above article is pure mealy-mouthed blather.
I cant even stomach reading about Iphone Joan, never mind hearing her head melting voice. The sooner she is out of government the better,
CAN I JUST SAY bye bye joan! FOR THE PEOPLE
SF jumping on another bandwagon, I see.
There is zero mention of Junior Cert reform in SF’s manifesto from the last general election: http://www.sinnfein.ie/files/2011/SF_GeneralElectionManifesto2011.pdf
It seems a bit rich for a Labour TD to pass any remark on where people went to school…it seems to me that more than on of their own had a fee paying Education and at least one confirmed that was important by sending his children to fee paying schools?
St. Jude is Moanie Joan’s new Patron Saint.
Burton is a dipstick and will be political history soon enough
Labour getting their mojo back. About time.
Mojo? More like voodoo zombies.
Mojo?
Does that stand for Mad Old Joan?!
John, that was a goodie!! :-D
So they have at least 18 votes in 2016 then? Or are the green thumbers just being kind?
What a witch she is most hated person in the Country now her and Enda The people can not stand them any more
They has, has they?
Mary Lou is getting terrible crow’s feet and Joan looks like she’s melting. It’s time to get some attractive women in senior party positions. In the North, we have delights such as Arlene Foster, Naomi Long and Carál Ní Chúilín. Now they’re riding material.
It’s time to get casually sexist lads.. let’s all talk about women’s appearances and not mention once how the men look… except willie o’dea.. we have to mention him and his magnificent moustache. And doesn’t Micky Wallace’s beard look awful
I love a bit of casual sexism. Don’t be knocking it.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2026450/One-teachers-bullied-online-parents-pupils.html
“Facebook and Twitter have been used to intimidate teachers over bad grades or simply because they are not liked.
More than a quarter of those that admit they have been targeted say the abuse has come from parents with one headteacher was driven to the brink of suicide by a year-long online hate campaign.
One parent even set up a ‘Google group’ and asked others to join in their abuse.”
Does the government not get it, when teachers mark their own students, then if the student gets a bad score who do you think their parents will take this out on, their child or the teacher?
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/mar/30/teachers-bullied-online
“More than one in seven teachers has been the victim of cyberbullying by pupils or parents, and almost half know a colleague who has been targeted, according to a survey published today.
Students have set up “hate” groups on social networking sites calling for specific teachers to be sacked and have even created fake profiles in their names containing defamatory information.”
http://www.exaronews.com/articles/5066/more-than-a-third-of-teachers-bullied-and-threatened-by-parents
Over 40% of teachers threatened by parents and .3% of 14,000 teachers was physical abuse by parents. This is what self assessing will do as it has happened in England and bringing this in here will do the same.
Parents are going to bully the teachers here because when their child is upset due to a poor or poorer grade they blame the teacher but this government do not care and all that this does is make teachers stop teaching and is that what the government wants?
http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2011/oct/03/bullying
“I am an ICT teacher and feel that I have to give students high marks or be labelled incompetent. There is nowhere in the system that you can bring this to light.”
“My health was so badly affected that I had no option but to leave.”
It will be the same here and the government does not care and when someone sticks up for the teachers, they get shot down why?
The fact is the government are bullies and they are promoting now the bullying of teachers and anyone who tries to make a point like Mary Lou is then attack by a person who acts like a bully?
I thought that Mary Lou would do a sit-in if she was really passionate about the rights of teachers.
iPhone Joan will have no prob getting job when she gets gate this year
“Haunting houses she will clean up”
Some mistake surely, shouldn’t Lairy Moo be compared to a martyr instead?
have your say