30 August 2021
Thanks to all of you who supported our campaign to evacuate our staff from Kabul, and to all who worked so hard behind the scenes to try and make this happen.
Sadly, despite this and the brave attempts of our staff to access the airport, they were not able to be evacuated. We are continuing to support them in Kabul and are still working towards their eventual evacuation.
The two women and their immediate family, including a 9 month old baby, spent a relentless 46 hours around the airport entrance, either in a bus or a panicky crowd, with incessant gunfire and the constant real threat of a terrorist bomb.
The staff members were picked up at 5am on Friday to go to the airport and remained in the area, either on the bus or in a crowd, until early Sunday morning. At times shots were being fired to try to control the crowd, and one person in front of them was killed.
There was a problem when one of the family members was not included on the list of people being evacuated, and a subsequent evacuation attempt was abandoned due to a terrorist threat in the area.
They were agonisingly close to leaving the country but the increasingly dangerous situation around the airport and the critical deadline for evacuations acted against them.
They eventually returned safely to their home.
We hope the government will be able to arrange further evacuations in the coming weeks, and will continue to push for our staff to be evacuated.