Canada has evacuated more than 1,100 people from Afghanistan: immigration minister

TORONTO – Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said on Sunday that the Canadian evacuation flight has evacuated more than 1,100 people from Afghanistan this month, and the 40 families evacuated before the Taliban marched into Kabul have now completed the COVID-19 quarantine period in Canada . “We have seen 12 planes take off and more than 1,100 people evacuated. This is an amazing job for our armed forces,” Mendicino told CTV during the question and answer period. Afghan families began arriving in Canada on August 4. Canada’s rescue work was suspended for several days, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau blamed the Taliban’s presence at Kabul Airport. Mendicino said that since the resumption of evacuation flights on Thursday, three planes have taken more than 400 people out of the country.

At a press conference on Sunday, Mendicino told reporters that when the Canadian evacuation flight resumed on August 19, 175 Afghans and 13 foreigners left Kabul Airport and 106 were evacuated on Friday. People, more than 121 people were evacuated on Saturday. Evacuate. He said that the first 40 Afghan families who arrived in Canada earlier this month left the COVID-19-related quarantine area a few days ago. A family that arrived on Canadian soil on August 4 has grown up. Mendicino said that a refugee who arrived that day had a baby girl who was a Canadian citizen. Meanwhile, in the United States, Major General William Taylor told reporters on Saturday that the United States has evacuated 17,000 people from Afghanistan, including 2,500 American citizens. To further aid their evacuation efforts, the United States announced on Sunday that they will use 18 commercial aircraft to transport people from Kabul.

On Sunday, the White House said that nearly 8,000 people had been evacuated in the last 24 hours on coalition flights, including commercial flights, and U.S. military flights.

With air bridges reopening, there is hope that Canada will be able to aid more people out of Afghanistan, but the unstable situation at Kabul airport is making it difficult.

“The situation on the ground is volatile, it’s precarious. And so we’re staying in constant contact with all the people we’re trying to help, and we’ve given full operational discretion to the armed forces to make whatever calls they need to get those people on flights, and as you seen, we’ve made some progress but there’s more work to do,” Mendicino told Question Period host Evan Solomon.

However, the minister said it is expected that the Taliban will follow through on their word to let people who want to leave, leave.

“We’ve made it very clear publicly and we’ll continue to do so that it’s our expectation that the Taliban allow every person who’s trying to leave Afghanistan safe passage to do so,” he said.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan told reporters at a press conference on Sunday that the situation on the ground at Kabul airport is changing by the hour.

“The situation on the ground is extremely chaotic and difficult,” he said.