KABUL. Jan 15 (Interfax-AVN) - A Russian IL-76 Candid aircraft carrying specialists from the Emergencies Ministry, who will be involved in opening the tunnel through the Salang mountain pass, landed at the Kabul airport on Tuesday. This has happened for the first time since 1989.
"The obstructions inside the tunnel have been completely cleared, and servicemen from a special unit of the Russian Emergencies Ministry together with French and Afghan specialists are now leveling the road surface for the first humanitarian convoy from Dushanbe to pass through the tunnel," Deputy Emergencies Minister Colonel General Valery Vostrotin, who heads a Ministry mission to Afghanistan, has told Interfax-Military News Agency.
The inspection of trucks belonging to the Russian national emergency humanitarian corps for their delivery of cargoes to Afghanistan will be carried out in Dushanbe on Tuesday, Vostrotin said.
"The restoration of the Kabul airport's strip is not yet completed, and the landing of high-capacity planes is complicated," the deputy minister said. That is why aircraft of the Russian Emergencies Ministry delivering humanitarian aid and other cargo to Afghanistan are landing at the Bagram air force base 70km from Kabul.
Vostrotin said that 18 flights had been made to Afghanistan from Moscow and Dushanbe since November 29, 2002. Thirteen flights were performed by planes and the rest by helicopters. The aircraft airlifted 420t of food, 11t of medicines, over 2,000 mattresses, 480 beds, warm clothes, rubber footgear and other necessary commodities. Besides, two helicopters made humanitarian flights from Dushanbe to Kabul.