Two planes landed at Frankfurt Airport early Thursday with evacuees from the Afghan capital Kabul as the pace of German evacuations increased following a chaotic start.
A total of around 500 people were on board the two chartered planes from Lufthansa and Uzbekistan Airways.
After landing in Germany, passengers spoke of chaos at the airport in Kabul. Mahmud Sadjadi said he had seen dead people and heard gunshots. "It is terrible," he said. "Helplessness, hopelessness. Nothing but chaos," he said of the situation in Kabul.
Another passenger, who did not want to give his name, spoke of organizational problems. "The situation is difficult and not easy to get under control," he said. But the people in Afghanistan need help. "The world must help the Afghan people."
The two aircraft had taken off from the Uzbek capital Tashkent, where the Bundeswehr has established an evacuation hub.
The Ministry of Defence said it would evacuate "as many German nationals, local staff and other endangered persons" for as long as it can.
The evacuation operation will involve up to 600 soldiers and has been given a budget of some 40 million euros (47 million dollars), according to a cabinet decision.
Additional evacuation flights from Tashkent are expected in the course of Thursday.
The plan is for the people to be taken from Tashkent on to Germany by national carrier Lufthansa, and the first such flight arrived in Germany on Wednesday morning. A total of about 130 passengers were on board the plane - most of them Germans or nationals of other countries who were able to travel in or out without formalities.
All the Afghans who were on board will be taken to a reception facility in Hamburg, the German federal police said. In total, the first group consisted of 17 to 19 people with Afghan passports. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) is now responsible for them.
Germany's most populous state, North Rhine Westphalia, has already said that it will take in 1,800 Afghan refugees.
The state chancellery in Dusseldorf said on Wednesday that this figure would include 800 local Afghan workers who have worked for German organizations in the past few years.
A further 1,000 places are to be open primarily to women who have been working in the fields of civil rights, human rights, art and journalism.
Several other federal states are also preparing to take in hundreds of refugees at short notice, dpa has learned.
Thousands of Afghans are currently trying to flee their country after Taliban militants effectively seized power within a few weeks. This has raised some concerns in Germany about a large-scale influx of refugees similar to the one that brought large numbers fleeing the civil war in Syria in 2015.
An online poll conducted by the Civey polling institute for the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper suggests that almost two thirds, or 62.9 per cent, are worried about large numbers of refugees arriving in the country.
Almost a third, 30 per cent, did not agree with the statement, with the remainder undecided.
The political fall-out from the collapse of the Afghan government is starting to play out domestically, with Green MP Cem Özdemir calling for a thorough reappraisal of failures in Germany's Afghanistan policy.
Speaking on Deutschlandfunk public radio on Wednesday, Özdemir blamed Foreign Minister Heiko Maas from the centre-left SPD for the current developments. He said the minister had not listened to his own embassy in Kabul or to military experts from the Bundeswehr.
"Maas should have listened," Özdemir said. "The situation reports that the Foreign Office writes are just wishful thinking and didn't correspond to the reality on the ground."
He called for a pragmatic approach, which he said meant "talking to those who have something to say there now. It's hell, but it's like that."
The German ambassador to Afghanistan, Markus Potzel, held a first meeting with representatives of the Taliban in the Gulf emirate of Qatar on Wednesday, with the aim of securing safe passage to the airport for Afghans.
The talks had not yet yielded any agreements, Maas said.
