US completes evacuation of 1,24,000 people from Afghanistan

Kabul: The US has completed one of the biggest airlifts in history, with 1,24,000 people evacuated from Afghanistan to safety, a government official said on Tuesday. Ned Price, spokesperson for the US State Department said in a tweet, "The United States completed one of the biggest airlifts in history, with 1,24,000 people evacuated from Afghanistan to safety. Our diplomats, our military, and our intelligence professionals achieved this under the most difficult conditions imaginable." Also Read | Neeraj Chopra’s dream comes true as he takes parents on their first flight On Friday, Psaki also informed that the country is planning to vaccinate all the people who are arriving in the US under Operation Allies Mission. Also Read | Punjab: Harpal Cheema asks Kisan Morcha to reconsider decision on poll campaigning The mission has been undertaken by the US in a bid to evacuate US partners, US permanent residents in Afghanistan along vulnerable Afghans including women and children after the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan. Earlier on Monday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken defended the US withdrawal from Afghanistan stressing that staying would have "re-upped the war for another five, ten or twenty years". During his testimony in Congress on Monday, Blinken said: "The agreement reached by the previous administration required all US forces to be out of Afghanistan by May 1. Had the President not followed through on the commitments that his predecessor made, those attacks would have resumed." Afghanistan plunged into crisis last month after Kabul fell to the Taliban and the democratically elected government of former president Ashraf Ghani collapsed. -PTC News