Several rockets have been fired at Kabul’s international airport, a day before the deadline for the US troops to pull out of Afghanistan ends.
The White House, which confirmed the attack, said that evacuation operations at the airport were not interrupted, adding that US President Joe Biden was briefed about the latest rocket attack on Monday morning aimed at the Hamid Karzai Airport in Kabul.
A US official told the Reuters news agency that some of the rockets were intercepted by a missile defence system.
The ISIL (ISIS) armed group claimed responsibility for the attack, the group’s Nasher News said on its Telegram channel, adding that six Katyusha rockets were fired at the airport.
The attack comes a day after the US forces launched second drone attack in Afghanistan after Thursday’s suicide bombing at the airport that left nearly 200 people dead. At least 13 US troops were also among those killed.
The US said it had wanted to take out suicide bombers in the latest drone attack in Kabul but media reports say several children were killed in the incident that destroyed a car laden with explosives.
A Pakistani plane carrying medicines and health supplies has landed in Afghanistan’s northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, bringing the first shipment of supplies since Kabul came under the control of Taliban.
Pakistan’s ambassador to Kabul announced the development as part of a humanitarian air bridge for essential supplies to Afghanistan in coordination with international agencies.
This was the first of three flights planned with Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) to meet urgent shortages in medicines and medical supplies in Afghanistan, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a statement.
The plane was loaded with the supplies by the WHO’s logistics team at the International Humanitarian City in Dubai and flew directly to Mazar-i-Sharif airport in Afghanistan.
The ISIL (ISIS) armed group has claimed responsibility for a rocket attack on Kabul airport, the group’s Nasher News said on its Telegram channel.
“By the grace of God Almighty, the soldiers of the Caliphate targeted Kabul International Airport with six Katyusha rockets,” it said.
The United States air lifted about 1,200 people from Kabul on Sunday, the White House says, as the massive evacuation from Afghanistan enters its final day.
Russia has proposed an international conference to rebuild Afghanistan’s economy following the Taliban’s takeover of the country and an ensuing wave of migrations.
“All the wealthy countries of the world must meet with representatives of the new Afghan authorities to discuss issues of economic and social reconstruction,” Moscow’s Afghanistan envoy, Samir Kabulov, said on state television.
Kabulov said he saw countries that had deployed troops in Afghanistan as first in line for such efforts, saying: “This is a question of honour and conscience.”
However, he also clarified that the conference would not mean “leaving the money to the Taliban,” but said the money was needed to support the national currency, for example.
One in three Afghans is going hungry and more than half a million people have been displaced by conflict since January.
Russia has called on the US to release Afghan central bank reserves that Washington blocked after the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul earlier this month.
“If our Western colleagues are actually worried about the fate of the Afghan people, then we must not create additional problems for them by freezing gold and foreign exchange reserves,” said the Kremlin’s envoy to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov.
The US must urgently unfreeze these assets, he said on the state-run Rossiya 24 network, “to bolster the rate of the collapsing national currency”. Kabulov added that without doing so the new Afghan authorities will turn to “the trafficking of illegal opiates” and “sell on the black market the weapons” abandoned by the Afghan army and the US.
As evacuations from Kabul wind down in coming days, “a larger crisis is just beginning” in Afghanistan and for its 39 million people, the UN refugee agency UNHCR says, appealing for support.
Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, whose agency said last Friday that up to 500,000 Afghans could flee by year-end, reiterated a call for borders to remain open and for more countries to share “this humanitarian responsibility” with Iran and Pakistan which already host 2.2 million Afghans.
“The airlifts out of Kabul will end in a matter of days, and the tragedy that has unfolded will no longer be as visible. But it will still be a daily reality for millions of Afghans. We must not turn away. A far greater humanitarian crisis is just beginning,” Grandi said in a statement.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has said Russia and China need to be involved in talks on the future of Afghanistan, including on plans for the evacuation of Afghans facing possible persecution by the Taliban.
An emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in New York later on Monday would be an indication of whether Moscow and Beijing are wiling to cooperate, he said.
There are efforts under way “to bring all important international partners to the table, and so it will be important that Russia and China are also there”, Maas said during a visit to the Uzbek capital Tashkent.
Unlike the other permanent members of the UN Security Council – United States, Britain and France – Russia and China still have embassies open in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
An aid group has expressed concern about the health of a group of Afghan refugees who have been stranded for weeks at the border between Poland and Belarus amid a spat about migration between the two countries.
“Many are complaining of fever, vomiting and diarrhoea,” spokesperson Kalina Czwarnog, of the aid organisation Ocalenie, which means “rescue”, told DPA news agency. Polish border guards had stopped an ambulance from reaching the people, she said.
The group is made up of 32 people from Afghanistan, according to the aid organisation. They have been staying in a forest near the village of Usnarz Gorny for almost three weeks, hoping to cross into the EU.
Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, has condemned the United States for launching an attack in Kabul without informing it first, according to an interview on China’s state television CGTN.
The spokesman told CGTN that it is unlawful for the US to launch attacks in other countries at will, adding that seven people were killed in Sunday’s drone strike.
“If there was any potential threat in Afghanistan, it should have been reported to us, not an arbitrary attack that has resulted in civilian casualties,” Mujahid said in a written response to CGTN.
Uzbekistan ready to help Germany with evacuations: Minister
Uzbekistan is willing to open its borders to people fleeing from Taliban rule in Afghanistan who are on a German list of those at-risk in the country and need to be evacuated, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas says.
Maas is on a trip to Turkey, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and Qatar, among other to find ways to evacuate these people, either by plane if Kabul airport can be kept open after NATO withdraws or overland to neighbouring countries.
“Uzbekistan is prepared to help us with this group of people,” Maas said.
he United States has the capacity to evacuate the approximately 300 US citizens remaining in Afghanistan who want to leave before the Tuesday deadline, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan says.
“We have the capacity to have 300 Americans, which is roughly the number we think are remaining, come to the airport and get on planes in the time that is remaining,” he said.
Sullivan said the US does not currently plan to have an ongoing embassy presence after the final US troop withdrawal. But he pledged the US “will make sure there is safe passage for any American citizen, any legal permanent resident” after Tuesday, as well as for “those Afghans who helped us”.
About 500 Russian motorised infantry troops are carrying out drills in the mountains of Tajikistan against the backdrop of instability in neighbouring Afghanistan, Russia’s defence ministry is quoted as saying.
All servicemen involved in the exercise come from the Russian military base in Tajikistan, the Interfax news agency quoted the Central Military District command as saying.
The current set of drills is the third one carried out by Russia close to the Afghan border this month. Next month, a Russia-led security bloc will hold another exercise in Kyrgyzstan which hosts a Russian military airbase.
Several children have been killed in a US drone attack that destroyed a car laden with explosives near the international airport in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, according to witnesses.
Witnesses told Al Jazeera at least three children were among six civilians who died in Sunday’s attack, while some media reports say nine members of one family – including six children – were among the dead.
Japan said that military aircraft the government had deployed for Afghanistan left Kabul carrying one Japanese person, and are currently staying in a neighbouring country.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said during a news conference that the aircraft also evacuated 14 Afghan people to another country at the request of the United States.
A small number of Japanese still remain in Afghanistan as they did not wish to leave the country, Kato said.
Mexico has received 86 media workers and their family members from Afghanistan, the government says.
Most of the people who arrived with the latest flight worked for The Wall Street Journal newspaper in Afghanistan, the government said in a statement. The group, the third one to arrive since evacuations began, landed at Mexico City’s international airport.
Mexico called the reception of people from Afghanistan “a political decision” carried out in full adherence to the historical tradition of humanitarian assistance. “The government of Mexico … reiterates its willingness to grant protection and assistance for humanitarian reasons – within its capacities – to people from that country, whose life and integrity are in imminent danger.” the Al Jazeera
