No more British flights purely for civilian evacuees will leave Kabul airport, but flights for British military personnel and a small number of Afghan evacuees will continue, a Defence Ministry spokesperson told Reuters on Saturday.
Britain said that they will end evacuation of civilians in Afghanistan earlier on Saturday. Many hundreds of Afghans entitled to resettlement in Britain are likely to be left behind, armed forces chief General Nick Carter said.
British defence minister Ben Wallace said yesterday that the country was entering the final hours of its evacuation and would process only people who were already inside Kabul airport, a report by Reuters said.
"We have some civilian flights to take out, but it is very few now", Carter told the BBC.
"We're reaching the end of the evacuation, which will take place during the course of today. And then it will be necessary to bring our troops out on the remaining aircraft," he said.
Britain's defence ministry on Friday said that they have evacuated more than 14,500 Afghan and British nationals in the two weeks since the Taliban took control of the country.
Britain was a key ally of Washington from the start of a US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 that toppled the then-ruling Taliban. Mr Carter, speaking to Sky News, said Britain and its allies might cooperate with the Taliban in future to tackle threats from the Islamic State terrorist group.
Britain said it would assist a private charter flight evacuating dogs and cats belonging to an animal rescue charity run by a British former soldier, Paul Farthing, whose plight attracted widespread public attention in Britain.
