The Diplomat
Spain ended its mission in Afghanistan on Friday and the personnel who were coordinating the withdrawal and evacuation of collaborators are already in Dubai.
The two A400 planes from Kabul landed in Dubai at around 7 a.m. and with these two flights the Spanish evacuation of Afghan collaborators and their families comes to an end, according to Moncloa.
On these last flights, 81 Spaniards who were still in Afghanistan are travelling, including embassy staff -the ambassador Gabriel Ferrán and his deputy, Paula Sánchez, along with around twenty police officers from the diplomatic representation’s security service- and fifty Spanish military personnel sent for the evacuation. In addition, four Portuguese military personnel and 85 Afghan collaborators from Spain, Portugal and NATO are travelling. All the Spaniards are expected to arrive at the Torrejón de Ardoz air base at 16:45.
The crews of the planes, that is, the personnel of the Air Force Wing-31, and probably some of the Air Take Off Support Squadron (EADA), will rest for a day in Dubai and will return to Zaragoza on Sunday 29th in the three A400M planes deployed by the Armed Forces in the evacuation operation.
Throughout this operation, the Spanish Armed Forces have evacuated a total of 1,900 Afghan aid workers and their families, from Spain and other countries such as the United States and Portugal, the European Union, the UN, NATO and the staff of the Spanish Embassy in Kabul.
Since the beginning of the operation to evacuate people from Afghanistan, there have been a total of 17 rotations of the A400M (Dubai-Kabul-Dubai), 10 Air Europa flights (Dubai-Torrejón) and 1 first A400M flight (Dubai-Torrejón).
Yesteerday, Spanish personnel carrying out an operation in Afghanistan to evacuate Afghan collaborators were unharmed after a double car bomb attack at the gate of Kabul airport and next to a nearby hotel. Some sixty people were killed and more than a hundred wounded.
The Defense High Command reported that the explosion did not cause any personal or material damage among the Spanish contingent deployed at the airport, which includes 50 members of the Armed Forces, 13 members of the Special Operations Group (GEO) and seven members of the Police Intervention Unit (UIP), as well as the ambassador, Gabriel Ferrán, and his deputy, Paula Sánchez.
It seems that at the time of the attack, in the early afternoon, an Air Force A400M aircraft belonging to the evacuation operation was at Kabul airport, transferring the Afghans to Dubai airport. The plane continued with its flight plan and evacuated 140 people to the Emirati base.
Police sources assured that the Spaniards are in a secure area of the airport and that security measures and self-protection measures have been taken to the utmost.
On his Twitter account, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said that Spain “roundly condemns” the attack and expresses its solidarity with the victims. “The international community is with the Afghan people, watching over their rights and dignity,” he added.
Sánchez insisted that Spain is working to evacuate as many people as possible and highlighted the work being done by all the personnel involved in the evacuations from Afghanistan “on a particularly difficult day”.
The head of the Spanish government stressed that two more planes arrived in Torrejón yesterday afternoon: one with 241 people on board and another, from Athens and corresponding to the European External Action Service, with 95 passengers.
Political forces in Spain, including the leader of the opposition, Pablo Casado, also condemned the attack.
In any case, the start of the attacks hastened the end of the evacuation process, which until now was linked to the departure, on 31 August, of the US troops who are providing security at the airport. Thirteen US military personnel were killed in the double bombing and fifteen others were wounded, the Pentagon confirmed.
The suspected perpetrators of the attack are the so-called Islamic State Khorasan Province, which was formed in January 2015 from an amalgam of Afghan and Pakistani Taliban and with harsher approaches than even the Taliban themselves, who have taken power in Afghanistan and who yesterday condemned the terrorist action.
