The UK’s evacuation of civilians from Afghanistan will end today, the head of Britain’s armed forces said.
General Sir Nick Carter said the final stages of the rescue mission were ‘going according to plan’.
He said: ‘We’re reaching the end of the evacuation, which will take place during the course of today, and then of course it’ll be necessary to bring our troops out on the remaining aircraft.
‘It’s gone as well as it could do in the circumstances.’
It is feared over 1,100 Afghans eligible for the UK’s resettlement scheme will still be stuck in the country when the final flight leaves, as well as 150 British citizens,
Sir Nick spoke of the ‘heartbreaking’ judgment calls military personnel had been forced to make.
‘We haven’t been able to bring everybody out and that has been heartbreaking, and there have been some very challenging judgments that have had to be made on the ground,’ he said.
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‘And I think that, you know, people like me, who have had a very, very long association with this country, 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.’
The deadline for evacuating foreign nationals and Afghan allies is not until Tuesday.
But many countries are withdrawing earlier following a deadly suicide bomb blast at Kabul airport on Thursday that killed 170 Afghans, as well as 13 US marines.
Security officials have warned that the site is still at risk of more terror attacks.
Gen Sir Nick said: ‘We should be holding our breath and thinking really hard of that last aeroplane.
‘I think our American allies are going to be very challenged because the threat from ISIS-K has not gone away and of course there are still lots of desperate Afghans trying to get out.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said last night that it had evacuated 14,500 people from Afghanistan since Operation PITTING began on Friday 13 August.
But Defence Minister Ben Wallace has admitted there were between 800 and 1,100 Afghans eligible under the resettlement scheme who would be left behind, while around 100 and 150 UK nationals will be left in Afghanistan, although Mr Wallace said some of those were staying willingly.
However, a number of MPs have said that based on the correspondence they had received asking for help, they thought this was an underestimation.
On Friday, Boris Johnson pledged to ‘shift heaven and earth’ to allow those who wished to leave the country to do so after the August 31 deadline, which was set by the Americans.
The prime minister said he felt a ‘deep sense of regret’ about those left behind.
‘What I would say to them is that we will shift heaven and earth to help them get out, we will do whatever we can in the second phase,’ he said.
He added that ‘the timing of this is certainly not the one that this country would have chosen, and I think that everybody understands that’.
Some British troops who helped with the evacuation mission have already landed on UK soil.
The MoD have said that once the final civilian evacuations were complete, this would free up space on military flights for diplomats and personnel.
Labour’s shadow Defence Secretary, John Healey said he expects things to wrap up in 24 hours.
He told Sky News: ‘This is the brutal truth, despite getting more than 14,000 people out, there are probably 1,000 Afghans who have worked with us over two decades in Afghanistan, helped our troops, our aid workers, our diplomats, that we promised to protect, but we’re leaving behind.
‘And I know those troops in particular will feel our failure on this as a country is a betrayal of many of those who risked their own lives to work alongside us.’
Meanwhile Tom Tugendhat, a Tory MP who fought in Afghanistan, said he was disappointed the evacuation effort was coming to an end.
He said: ‘I’m extremely sad about this and I very much hope that it might go beyond the August deadline but we found out a few days ago that it wasn’t, so I was expecting it.
‘It still leaves me extremely sad that so many of my friends have been left behind.
‘What I am working on, and you’ll understand I’m afraid that I’m not going to give you complete details about this, we’re looking at different networks to get people into second countries, and then connecting them to high commissions and ambassadors of the United Kingdom, to get them to the UK safely.’
Questioned over whether the UK could have done better when withdrawing personnel from Afghanistan, Mr Tugendhat said: ‘In the last week, probably not, but this has been a sprint finish after a not exactly sprint start.
‘There’s been many of us giving pressure to improve the processing of people who we think we have a duty of care to over the months and years.
‘There are going to be questions to be asked to the Foreign Secretary about the processing in the UK in recent weeks that we’re going to have to see what the answers are.’
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