A group of veterans working with officials in Qatar evacuated an additional 374 American citizens and foreign nationals from Afghanistan.
The Department of Defense acknowledged the rescue on Sunday in a Tweet.
“Evacuees from Afghanistan board an outbound flight to the United States from @RamsteinAirBase, Germany. This is one of the final outbound flights to leave Ramstein during evacuation support operations,” the department tweeted.
Karen Townsend of Hot Air reported that little information is known about the rescue itself. Rick Clay, the veteran who runs the Afghan Rescue Crew (ARC) Plan B told foreign correspondent Michael Yon that his group rescued 374 from Afghanistan.
“Today in AFG, Plan B ARC saved 374 souls, coordinating safe house, transportation, and a chartered airplane out of the country. I want to take this time and recognize everybody on the team who has worked tirelessly night and day for months to save our Brothers and sisters! It is quite a feat to bring volunteers together and be able to rescue 374 souls out of a country half way around the world and doing it remotely! And our work continues!” Clay told the correspondent.
Trey Yingst, a foreign correspondent for Fox News, also tweeted about the rescue, adding that it “was the ninth evacuation flight organized by Qatar.”
As The Daily Wire reported in late September, ARC has been critical of the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. Jean Marie Thrower, an Army veteran and volunteer for the group, said late last month that there were more people left behind in Afghanistan than the Biden administration was claiming.
“Definitely, there are more than the hundred that is being stated. We have multiple groups working together with teams with rosters of people, and we continue to scrub those rosters to make sure we know where these people are at,” Thrower said on Fox News at the time. “I do want to say as a veteran, quickly, that I’m appalled at our administration and how they have disrespected Americans and our allies, as well as put our soldiers’ future operations in jeopardy.”
She added that the Biden administration was underestimating the number of Americans left behind, based on contacts ARC had with those still in the country.
“We have the evidence out there. We are talking to these people. We have American children. We have children being born that are really under American citizenship, technically. So, there are a lot of different things,” Thrower said.
The latest rescue came just before it was reported that the U.S. State Department was opening several “reviews” of the withdrawal. As The Daily Wire reported:
A memo dated last week from Secretary of State Antony Blinken that was obtained by Politico said that the investigations will focus on “the State Department’s Special Immigrant Visa program; Afghans processed for refugee admission into the U.S.; resettlement of those refugees and visa recipients; and the emergency evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul ‘to include evacuation of U.S. citizens and Afghan nationals.’”
The Pentagon is also reviewing issues related to the evacuation. From Politico:
The Pentagon’s IG recently announced three reviews related to the evacuation: an evaluation of the botched drone strike in Kabul that killed 10 civilians instead of the Islamic State target; a review of DoD’s screening process for displaced Afghans; and an audit of DoD support for the relocation of Afghan nationals.