Tag: kabul latest news

  • Huge explosion hits Kabul mosque, many casualties feared

    An enormous explosion struck a mosque in Kabul throughout night prayers on Wednesday, witnesses and police mentioned, with many feared useless or injured.

    Police mentioned there have been a number of casualties however didn’t say what number of. One Taliban intelligence official instructed Reuters that as many as 35 individuals might have been wounded or killed, and the toll may rise additional. Al Jazeera quoted an unidentified official as giving a loss of life toll of 20.

    Kabul’s Emergency Hospital mentioned on Twitter that they had acquired 27 sufferers wounded within the blast, together with a seven-year-old baby.

    Witnesses instructed Reuters the highly effective explosion was heard in a northern Kabul neighbourhood, shattering home windows in close by buildings. Ambulances rushed to the spot.

    “A blast happened inside a mosque…. the blast has casualties, but the numbers are not clear yet,” Kabul police spokesman Khalid Zadran instructed Reuters.

    The Taliban intelligence official, talking on situation of anonymity, mentioned the explosion occurred in a mosque amongst worshippers in Khair Khana space of Kabul.

    The Imam of the mosque was amongst these killed and the toll may nonetheless rise, the supply added. Intelligence groups had been at blast website and investigations had been ongoing.

    Other officers within the Taliban authorities didn’t reply to a number of requests to verify the variety of casualties.

  • In Kabul youngsters’s hospital, medics wrestle with workers shortages

    In Kabul’s important youngsters’s hospital, the crumbling of Afghanistan’s well being system is mirrored within the eyes of exhausted workers as they eke out fast-diminishing shares of medicines.
    As crowds of moms and sick youngsters fill ready rooms within the Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital, medical workers are squeezing three infants right into a single incubator and doubling them up in cot-like toddler hotter beds.
    Nurses who as soon as took care of three or 4 infants every are actually having to take care of 20 or extra to make up for the absence of workers who fled the nation when the Taliban seized energy in August.
    “We tell each other that we have do this work, if we don’t do it, these problems will become big, it’s a loss for ourselves, our society and for our country,” stated Dr Saifullah Abassin as he moved from mattress to mattress within the crowded intensive care unit.
    Although the variety of blast victims and struggle wounded have fallen for the reason that combating ended, Afghanistan’s hospitals are grappling with the fallout of a quickly spreading financial disaster that has threatened thousands and thousands with starvation.
    U.N. companies say as a lot as 95% of the inhabitants doesn’t usually have sufficient to eat and final month, the top of the World Health Organisation warned the well being system was on the point of collapse as worldwide support has dried up. Lack of assist for the $600 million Sehatmandi well being service venture administered by World Bank, has left 1000’s of services unable to purchase provides and pay salaries, threatening well being providers in any respect ranges from village clinics to hospitals providing caesarian sections.
    STAFF NOT PAID IN MONTHS
    For the medical staff, it’s the acute workers scarcity that’s inflicting the heaviest pressure. They haven’t been paid in months and infrequently wrestle even to pay their automobile fare to work. “We only ask from the government firstly that, they should increase our staff,” says Marwa, the nursing supervisor within the nursery ward. “Because of the adjustments, most of our colleagues left the nation.
    “Nurses who would normally be taking care of three or four babies for each nurse are now handling 23. “It is a lot of load on us,” she stated.
    Mohammad Latif Baher, assistant director of the Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital, stated officers from the U.N. youngsters’s company UNICEF have given some assist however extra is required shortly to fill the scarcity of medicines and provides to deal with malnourished youngsters.
    “They (international organisations) have promised more aid. And we hope that they will keep their promises,” Baher says.

    The hospital, constructed in the course of the Soviet period in 1985 and financed by Indian support cash, has 360 beds however is working nicely over capability due to the dearth of functioning clinics within the provinces round Kabul. With a heavy circulate of households coming in, the hospital has admitted 450 youngsters and turned others away, he stated.
    Arzoo, who introduced her eight-month-old daughter Sofia in for therapy, already misplaced certainly one of her 5 youngsters to malnourishment-related sickness and is determined to not lose one other. “We had a water tank at home – we sold that and used that for treatment,” she stated, regardless that the fee means Sofia’s 4 siblings at house should not have a lot to eat. “Their father came in the morning and told me the kids don’t have anything. When they (hospital) provide some food, I portion it out and send some home to the kids.”

  • US navy flies out evacuees in waning hours of withdrawal from Afghanistan

    The US navy flew extra determined evacuees out of the Afghan capital on Monday within the waning hours of a last American withdrawal because the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate claimed duty for concentrating on the Kabul airport with rockets. The US navy reported no American casualties.
    The focus of the US evacuation was growing on getting the final Americans out. Senior administration officers mentioned Sunday that the United States has the capability to evacuate the roughly 300 US residents remaining in Afghanistan who wish to go away earlier than President Joe Biden’s Tuesday deadline.

    “This is the most dangerous time in an already extraordinarily dangerous mission these last couple of days,” mentioned America’s prime diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
    The regular stream of US navy jets taking off and touchdown at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Afghanistan’s capital continued Monday even after rocket hearth focused the airport and rockets hit a close-by neighbourhood. US Central Command spokesman Bill Urban mentioned 5 rockets focused the airport and a US defensive system on the airfield often known as a Counter Rocket, Artillery and Mortar System, or C-RAM, was employed towards them. He mentioned there have been no US casualties and the airfield continued to function. Further particulars weren’t instantly obtainable. The White House mentioned Biden had been briefed on the rocket assault.
    Locals view a car broken by a rocket assault in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021. (AP)
    Biden’s nationwide safety adviser, Jake Sullivan, mentioned Sunday that for these US residents searching for instantly to go away Afghanistan by the looming deadline, “we have the capacity to have 300 Americans, which is roughly the number we think are remaining, come to the airport and get on planes in the time that is remaining.”
    The White House mentioned Monday morning that about 1,200 individuals have been evacuated from Kabul over the prior 24 hours aboard 26 US navy flights and two allied flights.

    Sullivan mentioned the US doesn’t at present plan to have an ongoing embassy presence after the ultimate US troop withdrawal. But he pledged the US “will make sure there is safe passage for any American citizen, any legal permanent resident,” after Tuesday, in addition to for “those Afghans who helped us.” But untold numbers of susceptible Afghans, scared of a return to the brutality of pre-2001 Taliban rule, are prone to be left behind.
    Evacuees from Afghanistan are seen at their momentary shelter contained in the US Army Rhine Ordonanz Barracks in Kaiserslautern, Germany, August 30, 2021. (Reuters)
    Blinken mentioned the US was working with different international locations within the area to both maintain the Kabul airport open after Tuesday or to reopen it “in a timely fashion.”
    He additionally mentioned that whereas the airport is vital, “there are other ways to leave Afghanistan, including by road, and many countries border Afghanistan.” The US, he mentioned, is “making sure that we have in place all of the necessary tools and means to facilitate the travel for those who seek to leave Afghanistan” after Tuesday.
    There are also roughly 280 others who’ve mentioned they’re Americans however who’ve instructed the State Department they plan to stay within the nation or are undecided. According to the newest totals, about 114,000 individuals have been evacuated since Aug. 14, together with roughly 2,900 on navy and coalition flights throughout the 24 hours ending at 3 a.m. Sunday.

    MG Taylor: As of right now, greater than 122,000 people together with 5,400 Americans have been evacuated from Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/3uIYyqBxJs
    — Department of Defense 🇺🇸 (@DeptofDefense) August 30, 2021
    Members of Congress criticized the chaotic and violent evacuation.
    “We didn’t have to be in this rush-rush circumstance with terrorists breathing down our neck,” mentioned Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah. “But it’s really the responsibility of the prior administration and this administration that has caused this crisis to be upon us and has led to what is without question a humanitarian and foreign policy tragedy.”
    Senate Republican chief Mitch McConnell of Kentucky mentioned the US coverage in Afghanistan, with 2,500 troops on the bottom, had been working. “We were, in effect, keeping the lid on, keeping terrorists from reconstituting, and having a light footprint in the country,” he mentioned.
    Panjshir: Militiamen loyal to Ahmad Massoud, son of the late Ahmad Shah Massoud, participate in a coaching train, in Panjshir province, northeastern Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021. (AP)
    US officers mentioned Sunday’s American drone strike hit a car carrying a number of Islamic State suicide bombers, inflicting secondary explosions indicating the presence of a considerable quantity of explosive materials. A senior US official mentioned the navy drone fired a Hellfire missile at a car in a compound between two buildings after individuals have been seen loading explosives into the trunk.

    The official mentioned there was an preliminary explosion attributable to the missile, adopted by a a lot bigger fireball, believed to be the results of the substantial quantity of explosives contained in the car. The US believes that two Islamic State group people who have been focused have been killed.
    In an announcement, US Central Command mentioned it’s wanting into the experiences of civilian casualties that will have been attributable to the secondary explosions. An Afghan official mentioned three kids have been killed within the strike. The officers spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate navy operations.
    Crowds collect exterior the primary foreign money trade in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sunday, Aug. 29, 2021. (Image/NYT)
    It was the second airstrike in latest days the US has carried out towards the militant group, which claimed duty for the suicide bombing Thursday on the Kabul airport gate that killed 13 US service members and scores of Afghans struggling to get in another country and escape the brand new Taliban rule. The Pentagon mentioned a US drone mission in jap Afghanistan killed two members of IS’ Afghanistan affiliate early Saturday native time in retaliation for the airport bombing.
    In Delaware, Biden met privately with the households of the American troops killed within the suicide assault and solemnly watched because the stays of the fallen returned to US soil from Afghanistan. First woman Jill Biden and lots of the prime US protection and navy leaders joined him on the tarmac at Dover Air Force Base to grieve with family members because the “dignified transfer” of stays unfolded, a navy ritual for these killed in overseas fight.
    The 13 service members have been the primary US troops killed in Afghanistan since February 2020, the month the Trump administration struck an settlement with the Taliban by which the militant group halted assaults on Americans in trade for a US settlement to take away all troops and contractors by May 2021. Biden introduced in April that the two,500 to three,000 troops who remained can be out by September, ending what he has referred to as America’s without end struggle.
    The White House has rescheduled Biden’s assembly with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from Monday to Wednesday because the US pullout from Afghanistan enters its tense last hours.
    Sullivan appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” CNN’s “State of the Union” and “Fox News Sunday.” Blinken was interviewed on ABC’s “This Week” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.” McConnell was on Fox and Romney was on CNN.

  • Taliban says US drone strike in Kabul additionally killed civilians

    A Taliban spokesman mentioned a US drone strike concentrating on a suspected suicide bomber in Kabul on Sunday resulted in civilian casualties, and condemned the United States for failing to tell the Taliban earlier than ordering the strike.
    Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid informed China’s state tv CGTN on Monday that seven folks have been killed within the drone assault, describing the US motion on overseas soil as illegal.
    “If there was any potential threat in Afghanistan, it should have been reported to us, not an arbitrary attack that has resulted in civilian casualties,” Mujahid mentioned in a written response to CGTN.

    Pentagon officers mentioned the suicide automobile bomber had been making ready to assault the airport in Kabul, the place US troops have been within the last phases of a withdrawal from Afghanistan, on behalf of ISIS-Okay, an area affiliate of Islamic State that’s an enemy of each the West and the Taliban.
    US Central Command mentioned it was investigating reviews of civilian casualties from Sunday’s drone strike.

    “We know that there were substantial and powerful subsequent explosions resulting from the destruction of the vehicle, indicating a large amount of explosive material inside that may have caused additional casualties,” it mentioned.
    Mujahid had issued an identical condemnation of a US drone strike on Saturday that killed two Islamic State militants within the jap province of Nangarhar. He mentioned two ladies and a toddler have been wounded in that assault.

  • Pentagon says two explosions close to Kabul airport; US, civilian casualties

    There had been a minimum of two explosions close to Kabul’s airport amid an enormous and chaotic evacuation effort from Afghanistan on Thursday, the Pentagon stated, with civilians and US service members among the many casualties of what was described as a “complex attack.”
    A Taliban official stated a minimum of 13 individuals had been killed within the blast, together with youngsters, and lots of Taliban guards had been wounded.

    Pentagon spokesman John Kirby stated one blast occurred close to the airport’s Abbey Gate and the opposite near the close by Baron Hotel. Two US officers stated a minimum of one of many explosions seemed to be from a suicide bombing.
    “We can confirm that the explosion at the Abbey Gate was the result of a complex attack that resulted in a number of US & civilian casualties,” Kirby stated on Twitter. “We can also confirm at least one other explosion at or near the Baron Hotel, a short distance from Abbey Gate.”

    We can affirm that the explosion on the Abbey Gate was the results of a posh assault that resulted in a lot of US & civilian casualties. We may also affirm a minimum of one different explosion at or close to the Baron Hotel, a brief distance from Abbey Gate. We will proceed to replace.
    — John Kirby (@PentagonPresSec) August 26, 2021
     
    A US official advised Reuters as many as three US service members had been amongst these damage, and that US casualty numbers had been anticipated to extend, in keeping with preliminary info. At least one of many US personnel was severely damage, an official stated.
    The US Embassy in Kabul described “a large explosion” and stated there had been studies of gunfire.
    A supply who was in contact with a witness by textual content message quoted that witness as saying there appeared to have been two separate however simultaneous assaults, one by a suicide bomber close to buses lined up exterior Abbey Gate, the place the blast was adopted by small arms fireplace.
    Injured individuals arrive at a hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan August 26, 2021. (Reuters)
    The second occurred at Baron Gate, named after the close by Baron Hotel. The supply, talking on the situation of anonymity, quoted the witness as saying that youngsters had been among the many casualties.
    The assaults got here after the United States and its allies urged Afghans to depart the realm due to a risk from Islamic State.
    A large airlift of overseas nationals and their households, in addition to some Afghans, has been underway because the day earlier than Taliban forces captured Kabul on Aug. 15, capping a swift advance throughout the nation as US and allied troops withdrew.
    President Joe Biden has been briefed on the explosion, in keeping with a White House official. Biden was in a gathering with safety officers in regards to the scenario in Afghanistan, the place the United States is within the ultimate steps of ending its 20-year struggle, when the explosion was first reported, in keeping with an individual accustomed to the matter.

    Video: Casualties from bombing assaults on the Kabul airport have been transferred to Emergency Hospital. Reuters quoted a Taliban official saying a minimum of 13 individuals have been killed. The US Pentagon is reporting a minimum of 2 blasts, one close to Abbey Gate & the opposite close to Baron Hotel. pic.twitter.com/vgs7pudEcA
    — TOLOnews (@TOLOnews) August 26, 2021
    The United States has been racing to hold out the airlift earlier than its navy is ready to totally withdraw from the nation on Aug. 31.
    In an alert issued on Wednesday, the US Embassy in Kabul had suggested residents to keep away from travelling to the airport and stated these already on the gates ought to go away instantly, citing unspecified “security threats.”

    A Western diplomat in Kabul stated that areas exterior the airport gates had been “incredibly crowded” once more regardless of the warnings.
    The United States and its allies have mounted one of many greatest air evacuations in historical past, bringing out about 95,700 individuals, together with 13,400 on Wednesday, the White House stated on Thursday.

  • Taliban strengthened entry and management round Kabul airport: Pentagon

    The Taliban have strengthened their measures of entry and management across the Kabul airport, the Pentagon has stated.
    The Hamid Karzai International Airport is the one entry level for the worldwide neighborhood to achieve out to individuals in Afghanistan, a land locked nation.
    “The Taliban have bolstered their own security at their checkpoints and have gotten involved in crowd control…every day is a different day, and yesterday we estimated that crowds were about half the size they had been the previous days,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby advised reporters at a press convention on Wednesday.
    “We still haven’t seen them rise to the level they were in the early days of this. But yes, part of the reason is, certainly that the Taliban have strengthened their measures of access and control around the field,” he stated.

    Responding to questions from reporters, Kirby stated after August 31, it might not be the accountability of the US to handle the Kabul airport.
    He stated the US embassy is presently operating from the airport. The Taliban are accountable for operating an airport that’s in a metropolis that they’re now the titular heads of presidency there, Kirby stated.
    There’s no army property guarding the embassy compound. The US embassy is working out of the Hamid Karzai International Airport and “as for the Turks, they are still on the ground at the airport assisting in this security mission that we have there”, he stated.
    “I won’t speak for their intentions one way or another going forward, but there’s not going to be when the mission is over and when we are leaving the airport, the airport will not be the US’ responsibility anymore. How it gets managed going forward will be something that the Taliban…will have to manage on their own with — and I assume with, you know, with the international community. But that won’t be an American responsibility,” Kirby stated.

    The US, he stated, is in day by day communication with Taliban commanders about who they need to see get in and what the credentials are, what they seem like, what’s legitimate.
    “That communication happens literally every day. We have been nothing but open with the Taliban about who we expect them to let in. Again, fully recognise that not every step of this process is in our firm control and that there are going to be incidences where it doesn’t work as advertised,” Kirby stated.

  • Pakistan quickly suspends flight operations to Afghanistan

    Pakistan has quickly suspended Kabul flight operations and isn’t evacuating anybody in the intervening time, in line with media studies.
    The state-run Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) was the only business airline that had been working flights to and from Kabul in the course of the previous few days to assist in the evacuation of diplomats and overseas nationals from Afghanistan after the Taliban seized energy within the war-torn nation final week.

    PIA on Saturday “temporarily suspended Kabul flight operations owing to lack of facilities and heaps of garbage at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport tarmac”, Geo News reported on Saturday.
    Quoting sources aware about the event, it mentioned there have been no immigration officers and safety checks on the Kabul airport. Sanitation employees had been additionally not performing their duties for the reason that Taliban took management of the nation.
    The rubbish on the airport’s tarmac may trigger a tragic accident, feared the sources.

    The safety of Kabul airport is with the US and so they had been concerned with army plane solely, the report quoted the sources as saying.
    Radio Pakistan additionally reported that PIA has “temporarily” suspended its flight operation to Afghanistan as a consequence of unavailability of needed amenities at Kabul airport.
    Quoting PIA spokesperson Abdullah Hafeez, the report mentioned the flight operation will stay closed for a few days.

    “We have talked to Afghan Civil Aviation Authority for restoration of all required facilities at Kabul airport as soon as possible so that PIA could resume its flight operation,” Hafeez mentioned, including that PIA has to date evacuated 1,500 individuals, together with journalists, UN officers and Pakistani nationwide, in 5 flights.

    The Taliban seized energy in Afghanistan on Sunday final, two weeks earlier than the US was set to finish its troop withdrawal after a two-decade warfare.
    The insurgents stormed throughout the nation, capturing all main cities in a matter of days, as Afghan safety forces educated and outfitted by the US and its allies melted away.

  • The Taliban are again. Now will they restrain or help al-Qaida?

    The United States and NATO invaded Afghanistan 20 years in the past in response to the terrorist assaults of 9/11 by al-Qaida, harboured by the Taliban.
    Now that the Taliban are again in energy, there are already worries that Afghanistan will once more change into a breeding floor for Islamic radicalism and terrorism, aided by new applied sciences and social media.
    These are early days and consultants disagree on how the Taliban could select to control and on how massive a risk they may change into, or how shortly.

    But there may be little doubt that the Taliban victory is a big propaganda enhance for Islamic terrorism worldwide. Some predict that after 20 years, the Taliban have discovered some classes and are unlikely to repeat their help for teams like al-Qaida and the Islamic State, figuring out the results.
    Others, particularly in Washington, consider the Taliban is sort of sure to repeat its encouragement of Islamic terrorist teams and assume that the probabilities of one other assault on the United States and its allies are a lot larger now.
    Nathan Sales, the previous US coordinator for counterterrorism and a senior fellow on the Atlantic Council, argues that “the terrorism risk to the United States is going to get dramatically worse.” With the Taliban again in energy, he stated, “it’s just about sure that al-Qaida will re-establish a secure haven in Afghanistan and use it to plot terrorism in opposition to the United States and others.’’
    Other consultants are much less certain.

    “We went into Afghanistan to address the terrorist threat, and it will be a critical measure of whether what we have is just a bad situation or a truly awful one,” stated John Sawers, former head of Britain’s international intelligence service, often called MI6. “To have a friend of terrorists, which Taliban have been, running a whole country is not a good thing.”
    But the Taliban may have “learned some lessons in the last 20 years,” stated Sawers, govt chairman of Newbridge Advisory, a risk-analysis agency. “The question is always how much control the leadership negotiating in Doha has over the fighters, since traditionally in civil wars those on the battlefield have more power than those who sit in five-star hotels,” referring to the Taliban leaders who’ve carried out diplomacy from Qatar.
    Islamic radicals everywhere in the world will get “a much-needed boost” from the Taliban’s victory over the “Great Satan,” the United States, stated Peter Neumann, professor of safety research at King’s College London.
    “The supporters of al-Qaida are all celebrating this,” he stated. “It’s a victory over America, which is what they hope to achieve — these fighters coming down from the mountains to defeat the United States. A lot of groups will piggyback on this victory in propaganda terms — if the Taliban can do it, you can do it.”
    On social media and in chat rooms, “You can already see this wind of success blowing through the sails of the global jihadist movement,” stated Raffaello Pantucci, a terrorism analyst on the Royal United Services Institute, a defence analysis physique, and on the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

    “They see victory in Afghanistan as the apex of a number of successes in the world, in parts of Africa, in parts of Syria, with the French pulling out of Mali — it’s a narrative of success,” he stated. “They will push it and argue that you can fight for 20 years and get power.”
    So a extra speedy danger would be the encouragement of “lone actors” to commit native acts of terrorism, one of many primary targets of the social media marketing campaign, Neumann stated.
    But he believes that the probability that the Taliban will shortly present a secure haven for teams like al-Qaida and Islamic State is small. The Taliban are in energy once more with out the assistance of al-Qaida, they usually have understood that they misplaced their authorities and their nation in 2001 due to al-Qaida, Neumann stated.
    The United States may intervene once more, “not to protect human and women’s rights, but if the Taliban allowed international terrorism to flourish,” he stated.
    The Taliban must take care of remnants of al-Qaida and Islamic State already current in Afghanistan, Sawers stated. “They won’t move against them, but they don’t want to attract international hostility again.”
    Their first precedence, he stated, will probably be to consolidate management over a fragmented Afghanistan, together with “some kind of understanding” with minorities just like the Uzbeks and Shia Muslims just like the Hazaras and Ismailis. “The Talib have won this great victory and won’t want to mess it up now,” he stated.
    Others, like Sales, are certain that the Taliban will permit al-Qaida to function once more in opposition to the United States.
    He notes that US intelligence capabilities in Afghanistan will probably be degraded with no navy or diplomatic presence on the bottom and with US troops and drones based mostly a whole lot of miles away.

    The Taliban have at all times refused to interrupt with “their stalwart ally, al-Qaida,” regardless that they promised to take action within the February 2020 settlement with the Trump administration, Sales stated. He expects al-Qaida, flush with new cash and recruits, to reestablish itself in Afghanistan within the subsequent three to 6 months.
    In June, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have been requested by senators concerning the probabilities that teams like al-Qaida and the Islamic State might reemerge in Afghanistan and pose a risk to the US homeland inside two years of the US navy withdrawal.
    “I would assess it as medium,” Austin replied then. “I would also say, senator, that it would take possibly two years for them to develop that capability.”

    On Sunday, Milley advised senators on a briefing name that US officers have been quickly revising these earlier assessments, The Associated Press reported. Officials now consider that such teams might develop significantly sooner and are engaged on a brand new timeline, he advised the senators.