Germany postpones deportation flight of Afghan refugees

Berlin, May 31: Germany said on Wednesday it had postponed a scheduled deportation flight of rejected Afghan asylum seekers after a Kabul truck bomb attack killed 80 and wounded hundreds.

A government source said the charter flight was scrapped because diplomatic and consular staff, “so shortly after the attack, have more important things to do than to deal with organisational matters”. “In the next few days, there will be no return trips to Afghanistan,” said an interior ministry spokesman, adding that deportations would continue after that.

Germany has taken in over one million asylum seekers since 2015, the peak of the mass influx of mostly Middle Eastern refugees and migrants to the continent.

While it has generally granted safe haven to people from war-torn Syria, Germany is increasingly sending back Afghans, arguing that much of their country, where the German Army has helped stabilisation efforts for years, is safe.

Between December and March, Germany sent back a total of 92 Afghans on several charter flights to Kabul, accompanied by over 300 police, according to government figures.

The deportation policy for war-torn Afghanistan has been highly controversial. Some 200 students staged a sit-in blockade at a vocational school in Nuremberg on Wednesday and clashed with police who came to detain for deportation a 20-year-old Afghan student who had been in the country for over four years.