It is only a second landing and the Minister of Foreign Affairs has already promised that the operations could last several more days.
The first Afghans brought to safety by France after the fall of the country at the hands of the Taliban arrived Wednesday at the Parisian airport of Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle.
An Air Force plane landed shortly before 9 p.m., carrying more than 200 passengers, including 25 French and a large majority of Afghans, including a large number of women and children.
This is the second arrival in Paris of a flight of the airlift set up by France to evacuate French and Afghans from the country fallen into the hands of the Taliban.
An operation that could last several more days.
A first flight on Monday carried mainly French people.
"We are in the process of building their reception system"
Upon their arrival, the exfiltrated Afghans will be taken care of by the French Office for Immigration and Integration (Ofii) and the France Terre d'Asile association, both of which refused to provide details of their whereabouts. accommodation. "We are in the process of building their reception system in an emergency and in necessity", declares the Director General of Ofii, Didier Leschi. "We will take care of taking care of them, they will all have accommodation," confirms the general manager of France Terre d'Asile, Delphine Rouilleault.
Arrivals not vaccinated against Covid will be subject to screening tests and will have to respect a 10-day quarantine, the authorities said. In addition, they will be offered vaccination. These exfiltrators were escorted Wednesday at the end of a delicate operation conducted by French forces from the French embassy in Kabul to the airport where they took place in an A400M plane to the French military base in the United Arab Emirates. Base that they left during the day aboard another plane to arrive in France in the evening.
These are people "who were threatened and whose commitment deserved France to offer them asylum," Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said earlier on BFMTV. To these are added 25 French, that is to say "a large part of the people, of French nationality as Afghan, who had taken refuge within the building of the French embassy in Kabul", specified the head of the French diplomacy. Earlier in the day. “To our armies, police and diplomatic teams who organize these sensitive operations, thank you. We continue, ”tweeted for his part President Emmanuel Macron.
Nearly 200 Afghans who worked for France or who are threatened have just been evacuated from Kabul.
As well as French and foreign nationals.
To our armies, police officers and diplomatic teams who organize these sensitive operations, thank you.
We continue.
pic.twitter.com/xHSreTLOLI
- Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) August 18, 2021
The French airlift continues to operate, with a new flight between the Emirates and France scheduled for Thursday, with 120 people on board, again mainly Afghans, according to a diplomatic source.
"And we will continue as much as possible", promises Jean-Yves Le Drian, stressing the French desire to allow as many Afghans committed to rights and civil society as possible to leave the country and evoking a horizon of several days.
" Pride "
"This operation which allows the protection of Afghans who it was imperative to protect is the success of an important collective work", rejoiced the head of French diplomacy.
The file quickly returned to a political aspect, with offensive statements by the socialist mayor of Lille, Martine Aubry, who claimed to have worked with the Ministry of Culture to establish lists of Afghan personalities to be repatriated.
"There are still thousands of people in danger", she added, deeming "scandalous that the departure of the Americans was not anticipated by the Coalition and NATO so that we can remove these people. earlier ".
On Tuesday, 41 French and foreign nationals had already been exfiltrated from Kabul by France, thanks to the airlift put in place after the takeover by the Taliban on Sunday.
They arrived at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle at the end of the afternoon, in an army A310.
All passengers were required to pass Covid-19 tests.
The exfiltration operation, called Apagan, mobilizes two Air Force planes on the Emirates-Kabul section and two others for flights between the Emirates and France.
According to the Élysée, nearly 800 Afghans were welcomed on French soil as part of the “duty” of protection, between 2001 and 2014. In addition, between May and July 2021, 625 people who worked for the French embassy in Kabul (employees and families included) arrived in France, according to the same source.