Kabul airport gates closed after deadly bombings, crowds cleared
Darpan News Desk IANS, 27 Aug, 2021 10:30 AM
Kabul, Aug 27 (IANS) All the gates of the Kabul airport were closed on Friday following the deadly twin bombings a day earlier that killed 90 people, including 13 US personnel, and the crowds outside have been cleared, a witness said.
"I drove a group of people to the airport early morning. We failed to reach the airport as Taliban soldiers did not allow vehicles to approach the airport, I drove them back to their home," a cab driver Mohammad Quraishi told Xinhua news agency.
On Thursday evening, a suicide bombing rocked a gate of the airport where a crashing crowd was waiting for evacuation flights, and later another explosion hit the nearby Baron Camp, a former coalition base.
The ensuing gunfight lasted for hours, according to reports.
"The coalition forces and a group of Afghan security forces who remained in the airport after Taliban took over shut all gates, including the main gate, and no crowd was seen as I saw from long distance," Quraishi said.
Besides the victims, over 150 people were also injured in the deadly attacks, for which the extremist Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility.
Dozens of evacuation flights were conducted during Thursday night and early Friday.
Nearly 6,000 US troops have been deployed at the Kabul airport to secure the airlifting operation since the Taliban's takeover of the city on August 15.
A Pakistan court on Friday sentenced Qandeel Baloch's brother Mohammad Waseem, the prime suspect in the social media star and model's murder case, to life imprisonment.
The US space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has said the precise location of India's moon lander Vikram on the lunar highlands is yet to be determined.
With mission Kashmir as his sole focus, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan targeted India at the UN General Assembly, with his speech a repetition of everything he has been saying the past few weeks.
In July, Donald Trump made racist comments apparently against four Congresswomen. In a tweet, he said they should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came."
Alice Wells, US Acting Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia criticised Khan for not highlighting the "horrific conditions" that continue to exist for the members of the Muslim community in China's in Xinjiang province.
Audrey Truschke, History professor at Rutgers University, said India “has experienced, often personally and painfully, the cataclysmic results of his hateful brand of extreme nationalism — Hindutva”.
