The special
Indian Air Force flight that evacuated 168 people from Kabul carried two Afghanistan
senators who served the country’s civilian administration. Upon landing in
India, one of the Afghan senators tearfully proclaimed, “Everything that was
built in the last 20 years is now finished. It’s zero now.”. The senator,
Narender Singh Khalsa, was speaking to the media at the Hindon air base where
the Indian Air Force flight landed.

As of now,
India has been allowed to operate two flights per day from Kabul to evacuate
its nationals stranded in Afghanistan. Indians from Afghanistan also came in
three other flights, operated by Air India, Indigo and Vistara. The flights
landed from Tajikistan’s capital Dushanbe and Qatar’s Doha early morning
Sunday, reports NDTV.

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News agency
ANI reported that the Afghan special cell set up by the Indian Ministry of
External Affairs (MEA) has received more than 2,000 calls over the last five
days and responded to nearly 6,000 messages on WhatsApp, quoting government
sources.

Sunday’s
evacuation comes almost a week after the last batch of Indians, including staff
from the Indian embassy in Kabul and Indo-Tibetan Border Force personnel were
brought to Jamnagar in Gujarat.

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Many of the
people who were evacuated on Sunday are from a Gurudwara in Kabul where they
were sheltering for days. The Sikhs will be moved to Delhi’s Bangla Sahib.

Meanwhile,
Indian Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said that the Indian government has
decided to vaccinate Afghan refugees coming to India with free polio vaccine as
a preventive measure against the Wild Polio Virus. Returnees also underwent
COVID-19 tests at the airport.

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Sunday
marks a week since the Taliban took over Afghanistan from the civilian
administration by force. Since then, a flurry of Afghans and people from other
nationalities stuck in Afghanistan have been trying to escape the war-torn
country.