Boris Johnson has said that the UK evacuation operation at Kabul airport will continue despite today’s suicide bomb attack.
Speaking in Downing Street after chairing a meeting of the government’s emergency Cobra committee, the prime minister denounced the double bombing as “despicable” but insisted UK forces would not cut short their operations in response.
“We are able to continue with the programme in the way we have been running it, according to the timetable that we have got, and that is what we are going to do,” he said.
Mr Johnson confirmed that members of the US military were among the dead in the double blast at Hamid Karzai international airport. The cause is thought to have been a suicide bomb detonated in a sewage ditch on the perimeter of the airport.
The prime minister said that the 1,000-strong UK military detachment in Kabul would be working “flat out” to ensure that they process any remaining people eligible for evacuation to Britain “as fast as they can” ahead of the pullout of international troops.
But he said that the “overwhelming majority” of those approved for the airlift had now left Afghanistan, with the total flown out since 13 August reaching 15,000.
Mr Johnson said: “We’re going to keep going up until the last moment, but I want to repeat what I’ve been saying over the last few days: we also fully expect that those who want to leave Afghanistan after this phase one … are allowed to do that by the Taliban.
“We will use all the influence that we can bring to bear – whether political or economic, [or] diplomatic, as we said at the G7 – to encourage the new authorities in Afghanistan to do that.”
Mr Johnson would not be drawn on who was suspected to be behind the attack in Kabul.
But he stressed that it was likely that members of the Taliban were among those killed in the blast, in an apparent message to the new regime in Kabul that it has a shared interest with the international community in seeking to prevent the country falling prey to terror groups.
“There were almost certainly members of the Taliban who were themselves killed in this attack,” said Mr Johnson.
“And perhaps what it proves is the difficulty that any government is going to have in running Afghanistan, and threats that any government is going to continue to face.”
Mr Johnson said the UK’s priority was to “finish off this process of evacuation”.
But he said he then wanted to “move into the second phase, where we want to work with other partner countries in the G7 and others in Nato, and others, to engage with the Taliban to try to get a political process going that gives a more inclusive future, an inclusive and representative government for Afghanistan, and one that commands the loyalty and support of the people of Afghanistan.
“But as you can see from this attack, that is not going to be easy.”
Asked whether, by continuing the evacuation process, he was encouraging desperate Afghans to make themselves “sitting ducks” for bombers by congregating in large numbers around the airport, Mr Johnson replied: “Our military have been preparing this evacuation for months and months, and what we’re now coming to is the final stages of that evacuation.
“We always knew that this was a moment where, of course, there were going to be particular vulnerabilities to terrorism, to opportunistic terrorist attacks.
“We condemn them. I think they are despicable. But I’m afraid that they are something that we’ve had to prepare for.
“It isn’t going to interrupt our progress. We’re going to get on with this evacuation.”
