Westerners to board first commercial flight from Kabul

KABUL:

Afghanistan

’s Taliban authorities will allow between 100 and 150 Americans to fly out from

Kabul

in the coming hours, Qatari officials said on Thursday, marking the airport’s first such flight since US forces withdrew from the country.

The large group of foreigners, including Americans and other Westerners, would depart Thursday on a

Qatar Airways

flight that had earlier ferried humanitarian aid to the country, officials said.

From the tarmac at Kabul international airport, Mutlaq bin Majed al-Qahtani, a Qatari special envoy, said the flight would leave with Americans and Westerners.

“Call it what you want, a charter or a commercial flight, everyone has tickets and boarding passes,” he said, adding that another commercial flight would take off on Friday. “Hopefully, life is becoming normal in Afghanistan.”

The Qatari officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the formal announcement, provided the number of Americans.

The departure of a large group of Americans for the first time since the US finished its frantic airlift at the end of August would also signal that US officials have come to an arrangement with the new Taliban rulers.

In recent days, there had been a stand-off between the Taliban and organizers of several charter planes who had hoped to evacuate Americans and at-risk Afghans from an airport in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban have said they would let passengers with valid travel documents leave, but that many of those at the northern airport did not have such papers.