A special repatriation flight by the Indian Air Force with 168 passengers, including 107 Indians - landed at the Hindon air base near Delhi from Kabul on Sunday morning. India has been allowed to operate two flights per day from Kabul to evacuate nationals stranded in Afghanistan, ANI news agency reported quoting government sources.
The permission was granted by American and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces which have been controlling operations of the Hamid Karzai International Airport after the Afghan capital fell to the Taliban on August 15.
The evacuation comes almost a week after the last batch of Indians - the staff at the Indian Embassy in Kabul - reached Gujarat's Jamnagar. The evacuees who landed at the Hindon air base near Delhi today, will be moved to the Bangla Sahib Gurdwara.
Many of the evacuees are from a Gurdwara in Kabul, where they have been staying for days.
There were two Afghan senators and 24 Afghan sikhs among the evacuees. Afghanistan's MP Narender Singh Khalsa reached India from Kabul today. "I feel like crying...Everything that was built in the last 20 years is now finished. It's zero now," he said.
Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya shared a photo where returnees could be seen getting jabs at the Delhi international airport.
Three other flights - Air India, IndiGo and Vistara - carrying Indians evacuated from Kabul landed in Delhi from Tajikistan's capital Dushanbe and Qatar's Doha this morning.
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