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.
Fully vaccinated U.S. citizens and permanent residents can now enter Canada for non-essential purposes for the first time since March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced the two countries to severely curtail travel.
One person was killed and another injured during a shooting which took place in the parking lot of a store in the US state of Pennsylvania, authorities said.
Six Sikhs were killed in the August 5, 2012, attack in which four people, including a police officer, were injured and one person died last year from the wounds sustained in the shooting.
U.S.-based Novavax partnered with the Serum Institute of India to apply in the three countries, and plans later this month to also seek the World Health Organization review needed to be part of the COVAX global vaccine program.
The Biden administration has kept in place travel restrictions that have severely curtailed international trips to the U.S., citing the spread of the delta variant of the virus. Under the rules, non-U.S. residents who have been to China, the European Schengen area, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Brazil, South Africa and India in the prior 14 days are prohibited from entering the U.S.
