The UK’s final evacuation flight purely for civilians has left Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, the Ministry of Defence has said.
Further flights which leave will have UK diplomatic and military personnel on board, it added.
The head of the UK armed forces, General (Sir) Nick Carter, said it was “heartbreaking” they had not been able to rescue everybody.
He said hundreds of Afghans eligible to come to the UK remained in Afghanistan.
A mass airlift has been underway since the Taliban took control of the capital, with a deadline of 31 August in place for foreign troops to leave the country.
The US has been running the airport in Afghanistan’s capital, where a suicide bomb attack on Thursday may have killed as many as 170 people – including two British nationals and the child of a British national.
Among those killed in the attack was Mohammad Niazi – a taxi driver from London – who had travelled to Afghanistan to help his family get inside the airport.
It has not been confirmed whether he was one of the UK nationals referred to by the Foreign Office.
His brother Abdul Hamid said Mr Niazi been killed during the firing in the aftermath of the blast. He said his wife and two of his children were still missing.
More than 1,000 UK troops were in Kabul helping to process departures at the airport at the height of the operation. Some have already left and the rest will depart over the weekend.
The British ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Laurie Bristow, who remained at Kabul airport, tweeted that nearly 15,000 people had been evacuated but it was “time to close this phase of the operation now”.
He added: “But we haven’t forgotten the people who still need to leave. We’ll continue to do everything we can to help them.”
Some British troops have already departed, and a British military transport plane carrying armed forces members landed at an airbase in southern England on Saturday.
Britain was at Washington’s side from the start of a U.S. led invasion of Afghanistan that overthrew the then-ruling Taliban in punishment for harbouring the al Qaeda militants behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. More than 450 British armed forces personnel died during two decades of deployment in the country.
British defence minister, Ben Wallace, said on Friday that he estimated between 800 and 1,100 Afghans who had worked with Britain and were eligible to leave the country would not make it through.
Carter, the head of Britain’s armed forces, told the BBC on Saturday that the total would be in the “high hundreds”.
Many Afghans unable to leave judged it was too dangerous to travel to Kabul airport, Carter said.
He said the number of Afghans who were eligible to come to the UK but remained in Afghanistan was in the “high hundreds”.
He suggested some would not have wanted to take the risk of travelling to the airport – or been unable to – rather than it being down to “processing” issues.
But he added: “We are forever receiving messages and texts from our Afghan friends that are very distressing. So we’re all living this in the most painful way.”
He said those of them who hadn’t been able to leave via evacuation flights but were able to get out another way would “always be welcome in Britain”.
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