Kabul airport reopens to receive aid, domestic flights restart: Al Jazeera

DUBAI

:

Qatar

's ambassador to

Afghanistan

said a technical team was able to reopen

Kabul

airport to receive aid, according to Qatar's

Al Jazeera

news channel, which also cited its correspondent as saying domestic flights had restarted.

The airport's runway has been repaired in cooperation with authorities in Afghanistan, the ambassador said, according to Al Jazeera. The channel said two domestic flights were operated from Kabul to the cities of Mazar-i-Sharif and

Kandahar

.

Kabul airport had been closed since the end of the massive US-led airlift of its citizens, other Western nationals and Afghans who helped Western countries. The end of that operation marked the withdrawal of the last US forces from Afghanistan after 20 years of war.

The evacuation of tens of thousands of people came amid the rapid takeover of Afghanistan by the Islamist militant group the Taliban, the West's adversary in the two-decade war that followed the September 11, 2001, attacks on the

United States

.

Thousands of people wanting to leave Afghanistan, fearful of life under Taliban rule, were left behind when the evacuation operation ended at the end of August. The Taliban has promised safe passage for those wanting to leave.

Qatar's foreign minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, speaking at a joint news conference with Britain's foreign secretary Dominic Raab in Doha on Thursday, said the

Gulf

state was talking to the Taliban and working with Turkey for potential technical support to restart operations in Kabul airport.