Huge explosion in Kabul
A security official from the recently deposed government told AFP it was a rocket that ‘initial information shows hit a house’
Smoke rises from the Kabul airport: AP
An Afghan police chief says a rocket has struck a neighborhood northwest of Kabul’s international airport amid the US evacuation there, killing a child. Rashid, the Kabul police chief who like many Afghans goes by one name, says the rocket struck Sunday afternoon.
No group immediately claimed the attack. The rocket fire comes as the United States winds down a historic airlift that saw tens of thousands evacuated from Kabul’s international airport, the scene of much of the chaos that engulfed the Afghan capital since the Taliban took over two weeks ago.
Sources told News18 that the Islamic State’s hand is suspected behind the attack. The source further said Americans remaining in the city amid evacuations were the target.
After an Islamic State affiliate’s suicide attack that killed over 180 people, the Taliban increased its security around the airfield as Britain ended its evacuation flights Saturday.
This comes just hours after President Joe Biden, vowing to keep up airstrikes against the Islamic extremist group whose suicide bombing at the Kabul airport killed scores of Afghans and 13 American service members, warned another attack was “highly likely” and the state department called the threat “specific” and “credible.”
The Pentagon said the remaining contingent of US forces at the airport, now numbering fewer than 4,000, had begun their final withdrawal ahead of Biden’s deadline for ending the evacuation on Tuesday.
After getting briefed on a US drone mission in eastern Afghanistan that the Pentagon said killed two members of the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate early Saturday, Biden said Saturday the extremists can expect more.
“This strike was not the last,” Biden said in a statement. “We will continue to hunt down any person involved in that heinous attack and make them pay.”
He paid tribute to the “bravery and selflessness” of the American troops executing the hurried airlift of tens of thousands from Kabul airport, including the 13 US service members who were killed in Thursday’s suicide bombing at an airport gate.
The evacuation proceeded as tensions rose over the prospect of another Islamic State attack. The state department issued a new security alert early Sunday morning Kabul time instructing people to leave the airport area immediately “due to a specific, credible threat.”
With inputs from agencies
