The first international commercial flight to leave Afghanistan since the withdrawal of U.S. troops departed Thursday, said the foreign minister of Qatar, which has helped open the airport in Kabul.
The airport "has been tested and operationalised in the past few days," Qatari Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs HE Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said in Islamabad.
"We managed to fly the first plane with passengers just an hour ago," he said, thanking the Taliban for helping reopen the airport.
A large group of foreigners were aboard the Doha-bound flight, Al Jazeera television reported. The Qatar Airways plane had arrived in Kabul earlier on Thursday carrying aid, it said.
Although international flights have gone in and out with officials, technicians and aid, this was the first such civilian flight since the evacuation which followed the Taliban's seizure of the capital on Aug. 15 as foreign military forces pulled out.
A U.S. official had said earlier that 200 foreigners in Afghanistan, Americans among them, were set to depart on charter flights from Kabul on Thursday after the new Taliban government agreed to their evacuation,
Qatari and Turkish technical teams had helped restore operations at the airport, from where 124,000 foreigners and at-risk Afghans were evacuated by U.S.-led forces in the fraught days after the Taliban takeover.
Qatari special envoy Mutlaq bin Majed Al Qahtani described the flight out of Kabul on Thursday as a regular flight and not an evacuation. There would also be a flight on Friday, he said.
"Call it what you want, a charter or a commercial flight, everyone has tickets and boarding passes," al-Qahtani said from the tarmac, quoted by Al Jazeera. "Hopefully, life is becoming normal in Afghanistan."