Kabul Airport Attack 2021 Live Coverage: The final British flight evacuating civilians from Afghanistan took off from Kabul on Saturday, bringing to an end an operation that airlifted around 15,000 Afghan and British citizens in the last two weeks after the Taliban took control of the country’s capital, news agency Reuters reported. A defence ministry spokesperson said that the British forces are now preparing to leave and will take small numbers of Afghan citizens with them on the remaining flights this weekend.
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Meanwhile, as the massive US-led airlift wound down ahead of its August 31 deadline, the Taliban on Saturday deployed extra forces around Kabul airport to prevent gathering of large crowds two days after a devastating suicide attack killing close to 200, news agency AP reported.
New checkpoints sprang up on roads leading to the airport, with some manned by uniformed Taliban fighters with Humvees and night-vision goggles usurped from Afghan security forces. Areas which had seen large crowds of people gather over the past two weeks in their bid to flee the country following the Taliban takeover were largely empty.
Meanwhile, the United States military struck back at the Islamic State, bombing an IS member in Afghanistan less than 48 hours after the attack at Kabul airport. “US military forces conducted an over-the-horizon counterterrorism operation today against an ISIS-K planner. The unmanned airstrike occurred in the Nangahar Province of Afghanistan. Initial indications are that we killed the target. We know of no civilian casualties,” a statement by Central Command spokesperson Captain Bill Urban read.
Islamic State Khorasan Province is Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan.
Hundreds of Afghans desperate to flee the Taliban continued to crowd Kabul’s airport Friday, even after one of the deadliest bombings in the country’s history, as the death toll from the previous day’s blast neared 200 with hundreds more wounded, keeping the city’s hospitals grimly busy all day. The suicide bombing ripped right into the jostling throng on Thursday afternoon, piling an adjacent sewage canal with corpses. Health officials said at least 170 civilians had been killed, and likely more. The attack also killed 13 US service members.
Kabul attack: As bombing’s death toll soars to 170, desperate Afghans seek any exit
Hundreds of Afghans desperate to flee the Taliban continued to crowd Kabul’s airport Friday, even after one of the deadliest bombings in the country’s history, as the death toll from the previous day’s blast neared 200 with hundreds more wounded, keeping the city’s hospitals grimly busy all day.
The size of the crowd at the airport had dropped sharply, however, with fear paring the numbers down to hundreds from the thousands of previous days. The suicide bombing ripped right into the jostling throng Thursday afternoon, piling an adjacent sewage canal with corpses. Health officials said at least 170 civilians had been killed, and likely more.
