Shoeless and shivering, refugees step off the planes from Kabul

Red Cross workers describe ‘shocking’ scenes in arrivals halls but praise stoicism of those who had been airlifted

- Kevin Rawlinson and Josh Halliday

They arrived shoeless and shiv-ering, with some toddlers wearing the same nappies they wore when fleeing their homes days earlier. Volunteers have described the extraordinary dignity and stoicism of the Afghan refugees, including about 2,200 children, who were airlifted to the UK out of the clutches of the Taliban.

Some of the new arrivals were passing out from exhaustion in airport terminals, said Dara Leonard, a team leader for the British Red Cross. Others, including pregnant women and “the sick and incredibly frail” were rushed straight to hospital.

“These were people on the far side of exhausted,” said Leonard, who was among the first to meet the Afghan families arriving at Heathrow airport last week.

“My word, they are so stoical, so dignified but they were literally putting one foot in front of the other. To see mothers pushing their children forward towards safety was quite phenomenal.”

Emergency responders described scenes at British airports as “shocking” and “ chaos” as thousands of vulnerable people were processed before being transported to hotels sometimes more than 1 50km away, where they have to quarantine for 10 days.

As the last British military personnel returned to the UK last Sunday, the government said about 5,000 British nationals and their families had been airlifted from Kabul, alongside more than 8,000 Afghan former UK staff and their families and those considered at risk from the Taliban.