CAIRO, September 13. /TASS/. Russian and Turkish officials have notified the Taliban radical movement (outlawed in Russia) of their plans to deliver humanitarian aid to Kabul airport in the near future, newly-appointed head of the airport's administration Abdul Hadi Hamdani said on Monday.
"Recently, planes from Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, in addition to those from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Pakistan, have been landing at the airport. Russia and Turkey have also assured us that in the coming days, they will dispatch their aircraft with humanitarian aid for Afghan people to Kabul," he noted in a video address published on the Facebook page of Afghanistan’s Civil Aviation Authority.
At the same time, he stressed that certain difficulties remain that are preventing the full-fledged resumption of international passenger air traffic. "Approximately 10-15% of technical problems at the international flights terminal so far remain unresolved. Nonetheless, we are planning to resolve them in the near future," the official noted.
However, he noted that there are no security problems remaining with domestic flights, which resumed on September 4, and "passengers can freely fly to Kabul or out of it."
Civil air traffic in Afghanistan has been suspended after Taliban fighters swept into Kabul on August 15 without encountering any resistance and gained full control over the Afghan capital within a few hours. Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani said he had stepped down to prevent any bloodshed and subsequently fled the country. Following this, until August 31, several countries had concurrently been conducting emergency evacuations of its citizens and Afghans who cooperated with them.
The airstrip and the terminals of Kabul’s airport were significantly damaged due to the general chaos and the August 26 terrorist attack. Since the end of August, the technical specialists from Qatar and Turkey have been assisting in the restoration of the airport’s operations. On September 4, the first domestic flights left Kabul for Mazar-i-Sharif, Kandahar, and Herat. On September 9, the first international flight since the US pullout from Afghanistan was performed from Kabul to Doha, carrying 115 people, including a number of citizens from Western countries.