Afghanistan crisis 'Lost everything built in last 20 yrs': Sikh Afghan senator after reaching Delhi in IAF plane
Delhi: The 168 passengers, including 107 Indians, evacuated by an Indian Air Force plane from Kabul, landed at the Hindon air base near Delhi.
The evacuees also included two Afghan senators and 24 Afghan Sikhs among the evacuees.
"I feel like crying...Everything that was built in the last 20 years is now finished. It's zero now," a visibly emotional Afghanistan's senator Narender Singh Khalsa told news agency ANI upon landing in Delhi.
Many of the evacuees were staying at a Gurudwara in Kabul before flying to India in the special repatriation flight.
All evacuees will be moved to the Bangla Sahib Gurdwara next, according to an NDTV report.
A week ago, a batch of Indians working at the Indian embassy in Kabul reached Gujarat's Jamnagar.
Three other flights - Air India, IndiGo and Vistara - carrying Indians evacuated from Kabul also landed in Delhi from Tajikistan's capital Dushanbe and Qatar's Doha this morning.
India also evacuated two Nepalese nationals, who were stranded in Afghanistan.
All passengers were seen undergoing an RT-PCR test upon landing, according to NDTV.
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 Taliban took control of Kabul on Aug 15.
Earlier, 150 Indian citizens waiting outside Kabul airport for evacuation flights were taken to a nearby police station for questioning and checking of travel documents, media had reported.
Local media reports had said that they had been abducted, triggering panic back home.
They were later reported to be safe and managed to reach the Kabul airport.
