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View Next GalleryDefence has released more images of RAAF’s evacuation of Australians from Afghanistan.
It comes as Prime Minister Scott Morrison said four RAAF flights and one New Zealand Air Force flight managed to land at Kabul Airport. In recent hours, a further 650 people were rescued.
“The people who are doing this job on the ground … they are real heroes, compassionate heroes,” PM Morrison told Channel 9.
“They are going through what is an extraordinarily tense time and they are getting people out.
“We’ve been going like we won’t be able to get another flight in the next day, so we’ve been trying to make every flight as successful as possible.
“We’ll keep doing that for as long as we can. If that deadline [31 August] is able to be pushed out, we’ve made it clear to the United States we support that.”
The Taliban has repeatedly insisted the last day of the month is a “red line” for withdrawal, with its forces currently allowing evacuations to take place without interference.
The White House has responded by saying America will decide when its troops leave.
The RAAF has used its C-130J Hercules, KC-30A Multi-Role Tanker Transport (MRTT) and two C-17A Globemasters to lead the mission.
So far, around 1,500 Australians are thought to have been evacuated, but reports of numbers have varied.
On Sunday, PM Morrison described Kabul as being a “very chaotic environment” for rescues.
“We are uplifting not just Australians and Afghan visa holders for Australia, but those from the United Kingdom, the United States and New Zealand,” he said.
“We continue to … get as many people through as we possibly can in the time we have available, as safely as we can.
“I can’t guarantee the situation in Afghanistan. Australia is not in that situation.
“The United States are in a very different situation to Australia. We have to work in the environment as we know it and we have to do the best we possibly can.”
Nicholas
says:Good to see a sense of urgency and also a bit of flexibility from our PM.
Being hairy chested, as he started off, has its time and place but it was terribly tone deaf in relation to this humanitarian disaster.
chris
says:It’s amazing how leftie journalists seek “guarantees”, which, if they were given, would later be used to trap those who gave the “guarantee”.
Rocket
says:This rush and the pathetic excuse from the PM that “It all happened so quickly” is simply unforgivable.
He and Dutton should be drummed out of office forever for this alone. We have listened to theirs and their predecessor’s rhetoric on this pointless conflict for decades and they KNEW at least a year or more ago that the United States was going to be pulling out. Australian soldiers have been begging them for longer than that to get the interpreters out but in typical ‘SloMo’ style, he has obfuscated, weasel-worded and blame-shifted all the way to the death knell and now he’s saying it’s someone else’s fault.
If there was any justice in this country, he and his band of robodebtors, sport-rorters, NBN wreckers and excuse makers would be booted out of office.
Now we have to send our Air Force personnel and valuable AF assets into a precarious situation and great risk because of his film-flam approach to leadership.
chris
says:The ALP will hate these achievements…
Adrian Jackson
says:Silly comment Chris