A group of Afghan teenage girl soccer players and their families arrived in Britain safely Thursday, more than three months after the Taliban swept to power in Afghanistan.

       A plane carrying about 130 people, including over 30 teenage players, landed at a London airport after an effort that was aided by a rabbi, a former captain of the Afghan women’s national team and reality television star and entrepreneur Kim Kardashian. The refugees will be resettled in Britain.

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       Kardashian and her fashion brand helped pay for passage from Pakistan, where the soccer players had secured temporary visas, a Kardashian spokeswoman told the Associated Press.

       In the western Afghan province of Herat, where some Afghan youth girl soccer players had lived before the Taliban seized power, players’ homes had been burned and their families taken in the middle of the night by the militants, Khalida Popal, the former Afghan captain, previously told The Washington Post.

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       When the Taliban last controlled Afghanistan, from 1996 to 2001, the group enforced a severe interpretation of Islamic law that forced women to wear burqas while preventing them from working, attending school or appearing in public without male chaperones.

       Women were prohibited from playing sports during the last Taliban regime, and under the Western-backed government, the Afghan women’s national soccer team became a symbol of progress and feminism.

       The militants have since promised to respect women’s rights under the framework of Islamic law, but there is widespread international skepticism about their new professed moderation.

       Shortly after the Taliban took over Kabul, the Denmark-based Popal urged Afghan girls to burn their soccer shirts to avoid potential retribution.

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       “It is very painful,” Popal said of her message, “because for all these years, I have been fighting to empower women and girls, to earn the right to wear the jersey. I am now saying: ‘Take them off. Destroy them.’ ”

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       On Thursday, she tweeted “mission accomplished,” with a photo of the soccer players and their families onboard a bus.

       Face of Afghan women’s soccer urges players to burn their jerseys, disappear amid Taliban rule

       New York Rabbi Moshe Margaretten, whose nonprofit Tzedek Association helped evacuate Kabul’s Jewish community, was also involved. He had previously worked with Kardashian to advocate for criminal justice legislation in the United States.

       Leeds United, a top-tier British soccer club, has agreed to support the teenage players. The club’s chairman, Andrea Radrizzani, said in a tweet Friday that he welcomes the team and was honored to have helped it to safety.

       “We can’t wait to see them play football again,” Radrizzani added.