Hyderabad: An Air India flight carrying 78 passengers, including 25 Indian citizens, arrived at the Indira Gandhi International Airport from Tajikistan's Dushanbe on Tuesday. The repatriation flight was part of India's evacuation mission amid the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan. The evacuees were received at the airport by Union ministers Hardeep Singh Puri and V Muraleedharan.
Earlier, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said 78 people were airlifted from Kabul to Dushanbe by a military transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force on Monday and were being brought to Delhi on an Air India flight. "Helping in the safe return from Afghanistan. AI 1956 en route to Delhi from Dushanbe carrying 78 passengers, including 25 Indian nationals. Evacuees were flown in from Kabul on an @IAF_MCC aircraft @IndEmbDushanbe," Bagchi tweeted on Tuesday morning. Bagchi also shared a video on Twitter in which the passengers on board the flight is seen shouting slogans like 'Wahe Guru ki Khalsa, Wahe Guru ki Fateh' for a safe return from Afghanistan.
The government has been putting in coordinated efforts to bring back citizens safely after the Taliban took over the capital city Kabul. Over 600 people including the Indian envoy and embassy staffers in Kabul were earlier evacuated.
Read: US says it is focused on completing evacuation from Afghanistan by August 31
