KABUL, Afghanistan —

       Dozens of foreigners, including Americans, boarded a commercial flight at Kabul airport Thursday in the first large-scale evacuation since U.S. and NATO forces withdrew from Afghanistan last month.

       The departure of some 200 Westerners on a Qatar Airways flight to Doha, the Qatari capital, marked a significant breakthrough in the bumpy coordination between the U.S. and Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers.

       A senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media, provided the number of Westerners expected on board and said that two very senior Taliban officials had helped facilitate the departure. The 200 foreigners on board included Americans, U.S. green card holders and citizens of other countries, including Germany, Hungary and Canada, the official said.

       As Taliban authorities patrolled the tarmac, passengers presented their documents for checking, and sniffer dogs inspected luggage laid out on the ground. Some of the veteran airport workers had returned to their jobs after fleeing during the harrowing chaos of last month’s U.S.-led airlift.

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       Irfan Popalzai, 12, among those boarding the flight with his mother and five brothers and sisters, said his family lives in Maryland.

       “I am an Afghan, but you know I am from America and I am so excited” to leave, he said.

       As the group prepared to board, Qatari officials gathered on the tarmac of Kabul airport to announce that the airport was ready for the resumption of international commercial flights after days of repairs. Extensive damage to the airport in the frenzied final days of the U.S. airlift, which evacuated more than 100,000 people, had raised questions over how soon the transport hub could resume for regular commercial flights. Technical experts from Qatar and Turkey have been racing to restore operations.

       “I can clearly say that this is a historic day in the history of Afghanistan as Kabul airport is now operational,” said Mutlaq bin Majed Qahtani, a Qatari special envoy.

       “Call it what you want, a charter or a commercial flight, everyone has tickets and boarding passes,” he said, adding that another commercial flight would take off Friday. “Hopefully, life is becoming normal in Afghanistan.”

       The plane had earlier ferried humanitarian aid to Afghanistan.

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       The flight represents the first to depart from Kabul airport since American forces left the country at the end of August, their departure accompanied by a frantic airlift of tens of thousands of foreign citizens and Afghans fleeing the Taliban. The scenes of chaos, including Afghans plunging to their deaths after clinging to military aircraft that were taking off and a suicide bombing that killed 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members, came to define the fraught end to America’s two-decade war in Afghanistan.

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       A foreign diplomat, likewise speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to brief the media, said another 200 foreigners, including Americans, would depart in the next couple of days.

       It remains uncertain what the resumption of international flights over the next few days will mean for the tens of thousands of Afghans desperate to flee Afghanistan’s new Taliban regime over fears of what its rule will hold.

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       Hundreds of other Afghans at risk after the Taliban takeover because of their past work with Americans have gathered for more than a week in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, waiting for permission to board privately chartered evacuation flights out of the country.

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       Although the Taliban assured the world that it would let passengers with valid travel documents leave the country, many of those stranded at the northern airport did not have such papers, the Taliban said.

       Qahtani told reporters that the airport’s radar was now active and covering some 70 miles after U.S. forces left it inoperable.