Gandhinagar, Aug 17 (IANS): The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) successfully carried out a three-day evacuation mission to bring back 192 Indians stranded in what is now the Taliban controlled Afghanistan.
Providing a sigh of relief to those stranded in Afghanistan, the Indian Air Force (IAF) plane C-17, Globemaster, carried more than 150 Indian nationals from the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul to Jamnagar on Tuesday. The aircraft evacuated several Indian Embassy officials working in Afghanistan.
After landing at the Jamnagar Airforce Base, Rudrendra Tandon, Indian Ambassador to Afghanistan, interacted with the media.
"You cannot imagine how great it is to be back home. After two weeks of intense complicated situation, I had to take a decision on evacuation. I am very happy that the mission is over now and we are back home safely without any untoward incident or accident," said Rudrendra Tandon at Jamnagar IAF airbase.
The ministry of external affairs planned this evacuation mission and carried it out in three days.
"We had a very large mission. We had a mission of 192 persons that were evacuated from Afghanistan, in literally a period of just three days, in a very orderly fashion in two phases. Apart from the personnel of the embassy, there were also people from the public sector companies in Afghanistan and there were people from Air India, who also needed to be evacuated as the situation in Kabul city was rapidly changing. Then there were also Indian citizens who found themselves in distress due to the fast changing situation. But our policy was that anyone who reaches the embassy, would be taken into the evacuation mission and will have a safe and secure exit from the country," he said.
"The program would not have been successfully possible without the help of all the wings of the embassy and the program was monitored from the highest end and minute to minute detail," added Tandon.
The IAF plane will be refuelled and will head to Ghaziabad's Hindon Air Force Station from where they will leave for their respective states.