Paul “Pen” Farthing is safely back on UK soil along with hundreds of his animals, acharity has confirmed.

Animal Rescue Crew posted on its Facebook page about Paul’s safe arrival and revealed plans would be made to rescue Nowzad animal shelter staff left behind in Afghanistan.

It said: “As you’ll all have no doubt already seen, Pen and his Nowzad animals are all safely on UK soil as of this morning.

“All the animals have survived their journey. The first part of Operation Ark is now complete.

"Please follow their next steps on the Nowzad page.

“In the coming days I’m sure Nowzad will outline everything that’s needed to ensure the Afghan staff can safely travel, and soon, to the UK.

“Nowzad the dog’s legacy lives on in each and every cat and dog that have their paws safely in the UK.

“They now look towards their bright future thanks to each and every person who has kindly helped them.”

Paul, a former Royal Marine who is from Dovercourt, had previously claimed on social media his team and the rescue animals had managed to reach Kabul Airport on Thursday, only to be “turned away” due to changes in paperwork rules made by the US some hours earlier.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace used a series of tweets on Thursday to hit out at the criticism from Mr Farthing’s supporters and condemned “bullying, falsehoods and threatening behaviour” towards MoD staff.

When asked about his tweets, he told LBC: “My people were focused for the last two weeks on a humanitarian crisis.

“I had to listen sometimes to calls of abuse to my advisers, to my officials, based mainly on falsehoods, that somebody, somewhere had blocked a flight – no-one blocked a flight.

“Fundamentally, as we have seen on the media, there are desperate, desperate people, and I was not prepared to push those people out of the way for that.

“When people’s time is right, they were called forward, and that’s the right thing to do. But I hope he comes back, he was advised to come back, his wife came back last Friday, so I hope he does as well.”

Mr Farthing said his team were 300m inside Kabul Airport on Thursday but were turned away and as a result got caught up in the terror attack that killed Afghan civilians queuing up to flee the Taliban and US troops.

“Went through hell to get there & we were turned away into the chaos of those devastating explosions,” he said on Twitter.

All British troops have now been removed from Afghanistan, ending their 20-year mission in the country.

Around 15,000 people are said to have been evacuated safely by soldiers following a two-week long mission.