During a ceremony in Ottawa on Tuesday, Canada officially ended its 12-year military engagement in Afghanistan by welcoming home the last 93 soldiers who had deployed to the country.
Since the war started in October of 2001, Canada has sent more than 40,000 troops to Afghanistan and 158 of them lost their lives.
"You have seen the suffering of a population under the tyranny of deliberate violence, enforced poverty and perverse fanaticism," Gov. Gen. David Johnston told them, according to the CBC. "Many of you have witnessed the worst and the best of humanity."
As the Ottawa Citizen reports, it was a ceremony marked by warm embraces and emotional reunions. Pictures tell this story better than words, so we'll leave you with a few:
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.