Several rockets were fired early Monday at Kabul airport
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The jihadist group Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) claimed responsibility for the rocket attack perpetrated on Monday against the airport in the capital of Afghanistan.
“The soldiers of the caliphate attacked the Kabul international airport with six rockets,” the group said in a statement, the AFP news agency reported.
Several rockets that were fired early Monday at the Kabul airport fell in a nearby neighborhood on the penultimate day of US troops completing their withdrawal from their longest war, after the Taliban reconquered Afghanistan.
A senior security official who worked in the overthrown government two weeks ago indicated that the rockets had been fired from a vehicle in northern Kabul, where the air terminal is located., reported the AFP news agency.
Nearby residents reported hearing the sound of the missile defense system activating and seeing subsequent shrapnel falling from the sky, indicating that at least one rocket was intercepted.
In the Chahr-e-Shaheed neighborhood, where the shells landed, groups formed around the wreckage of a car used by the attackers, which appeared to have six rocket launcher tubes in place of the back seat.
The Islamic State (IS) and insurgent groups often place these tubes in vehicles to transport them undetected and approach a target.
The White House confirmed the attack and assured that the evacuation continued without interruption.
US President Joe Biden set tomorrow, Tuesday, August 31, as the deadline to withdraw his forces from Afghanistan and complete two decades of a military operation launched in retaliation for the attacks of 9/11 in 2001.
But US troops are now more focused on their own exit and that of their country’s diplomats.
“The President reconfirmed the order that commanders redouble their efforts to do whatever is necessary to protect our forces on the ground.“the White House said in a statement.
The return of the Islamist movement of the Taliban to power triggered an exodus of terrified Afghans who tried to flee thanks to a huge air bridge led by Washington that allowed the evacuation of 116,700 people, including 1,200 between Sunday and Monday, according to the House White..
Successive scenes of chaos have been recorded at the airport in the two weeks since the rapid offensive in which the Taliban took control of the country.
But since the suicide attack, the Taliban have restricted their security perimeter around the airport and deployed fighters to the last fence that separates them from the runway.
Taliban rival
The group Islamic State of Khorasan (IS-K), rival of the Taliban, poses a significant threat on this final stretch, as demonstrated by the suicide attack on the airport on Thursday that claimed more than 100 lives, including 13 US soldiers.
Biden warned of the high probability of new attacks and, in fact, the US military carried out an aerial attack on an explosive-laden car in Kabul on Sunday.
A Taliban spokesman confirmed the incident, noting that a car bomb targeting the airport had been destroyed and that an alleged second attack had hit a nearby house.
Throughout the war, the United States has been accused of killing civilians in its air strikes, one of the reasons that led them to lose local support. The same thing happened on Sunday: there were six dead, four of them children.
“We know of reports of civilian victims after our attack on a vehicle in Kabul“Captain Bill Urban, spokesman for the US Military Central Command, said in a statement.
According to Urban, the explosions were “powerful” and the army is studying whether there were civilian deaths. “We would be deeply saddened by any innocent loss of life,” he said.
In recent years, IS-K (or ISIS-K) carried out some of the worst attacks in these countries, massacring civilians in mosques, squares, schools and hospitals.
Although both are radical Sunnis (Taliban and ISIS), they maintain a deep enmity and both claim to be the true standard bearers of jihad.
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