Mexico City, Aug 25 (AP) Mexico welcomed a group of 124 Afghan media workers and their families Wednesday after the group fled their country because of the Taliban takeover.

The group arrived aboard a Qatar Emiri Air Force flight to Mexico City in the pre-dawn hours. The Foreign Relations Department said the Afghans had worked for “various media outlets" and had requested humanitarian visas because of the Taliban's hostility toward journalists.

Also Read | US Airlifts 19,000 People From Afghanistan in Past 24 Hours, Total Number of Evacuees Reach 82,300.

The New York Times reported that a group of its journalists had been taken in by Mexico and arrived Wednesday.

Mexico accepted its first group of refugees from Afghanistan on Tuesday, when five women and one man arrived in Mexico City.

Also Read | Afghanistan Crisis: Taliban Issue ‘Death Warrant’ for Afghan Woman Divorcee Residing in India.

The young women, who had to travel through six countries to reach Mexico, have competed in robotics competitions. They fled Afghanistan after the Taliban took control of the country earlier this month. The Taliban have been hostile to women working or going to school after a certain age.

The offer of safe haven to Afghan journalists is a sharp contrast in a country that is unable to protect its own reporters.

Press groups say nine journalists were killed in Mexico in 2020, making it the most dangerous country for reporters outside of war zones, and at least five have been killed so far in 2021. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)