National Geographic magazine’s famed green-eyed girl, Sharbat Gula, has been evacuated to Italy, the country’s Prime Minister (PM) Mario Draghi’s office announced on Tuesday, reports Reuters.
The office said it had responded to pleas from non-profit organisations working in the war-torn country to help her leave and “travel to Italy as part of the wider evacuation programme in place for Afghan citizens and the government’s plan for their reception and integration”.
Gula’s famous picture was taken by a United States (US) photographer Steve McCurry in a Pakistan camp in 1984, which was the front cover of the National Geographic magazine. She said she first arrived in Pakistan as an orphan, some four or five years after the Soviet invasion in 1979.
Pakistan arrested Gula for forging a national identity card and she was deported back to Afghanistan in 2016. At that time, former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani welcomed her.
In September, Rome said it had evacuated almost 5,000 Afghans after the Taliban seized power in August.
