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Australian troops have left Afghanistan, with the last evacuation flight safely reaching the United Arab Emirates, Minister for Defence Peter Dutton confirmed.
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The Minister for Defence Peter Dutton today confirmed that Australian troops had departed Afghanistan, with the final humanitarian evacuation flight on Thursday landing safely in the United Arab Emirates.
"I'm very pleased and relieved that our soldiers have departed from Kabul, and we took the decision to lift the last of our people yesterday, and they are safely in the United Arab Emirates, and I'm very pleased for that," Minister Dutton said on Nine’s Today Show.
"I just make that point and if we were to continue in that situation, we would have had casualties now as well. So, in that situation, we can't continue to put our ADF personnel and their lives at risk."
The announcement came as local ISIS affiliate ISIS-Khorasan denotated two blasts outside of Hamid Karzai airport in Kabul, taking the lives of 13 US military personnel who were undertaking screening checks at the airport, with at least 60 Afghan civilians dead.
However, the Commonwealth government has yet to confirm whether any Australian citizens were victims of the ISIS-K attacks.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne outlined that the government was in the process of contacting citizens known to be in the country.
"We will contact those for whom we have details and that is why it is so important to register and so important to follow the travel advice that we have issued,” Minister Payne said.
Australia recently deployed over 250 personnel to Australia’s Middle East operating base before embarking on flights to Kabul to support the evacuation of Australian nationals and visa holders still in the country.
Following the attack, President Joe Biden promised retribution to ISIS-K in retaliation for the attack.
“To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay. I will defend our interests and our people with every measure at my command,” President Biden said.
However, military and intelligence experts have questioned the US’ ability to co-ordinate targeted reprisals.
“Because the fact of the matter is, you can't effectively take terrorists off the battlefield in Afghanistan, unless you have intelligence collection capabilities and soldiers on the ground who are prepared to go out and accomplish the mission,” one intelligence official said in the Daily Mail.
Head of US Central Command General Kenneth McKenzie doesn’t believe the attacks are likely to stop soon, outlining that “we believe it is their desire to continue those attacks”.
[Related: Defence confirms deployment for Afghanistan evacuation]
