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2021-08-28 Afghanistan
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Taliban blocks access to Kabul airport to prevent throng
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[KhaamaPress] After the deadly twin explosions at Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai
...A product, and probably the sole product, of the Southern Alliance ...
International Airport which inflicted casualties to over two hundred civilians and US men in service, tens of people have again gathered at the doors of the airport.
Taliban
...Arabic for students ...
said that no one will be allowed to come closer to the airport so that they prevent the throng of people.
Officials in the cultural commission of the Taliban said that US troops have evacuated an important area in HKIA which has been handed over to them.
The Taliban did not say when will they allow people to enter the airport, but they had previously said that they will no longer allow Afghans to fly out of the country.
The twin explosions of Thursday afternoon killed nearly one hundred civilians including 13 US marines and maimed over two hundred more of which 15 are US personnel.
US president Joe The Big Guy Biden
 ...46th president of the U.S., who gives the geriatric a bad name. He blames Afghans for losing Afghanistan....
said that they will not leave their evacuation mission incomplete and will deploy additional forces if the military generals ask him to.
The pledge comes as UK, La Belle France, Australia, Italia, and Germany wound up their evacuation mission some before while others after the blasts.
As per the latest stats, the US has evacuated over one hundred thousand people from Afghanistan among them Afghans and US citizens.
Turkish officials also have confirmed that several of its soldiers were wounded in these explosions.
A Taliban official told Reuters that many Taliban guards were wounded.
Erdogan Says Turkey Has Held Its First Talks With Taliban
[ToloNews] President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday said Turkey has held its first talks with the Taliban in Kabul, adding that Ankara was still assessing the Islamist group's offer to run the Afghan capital's airport, AFP reported on Friday. Erdogan said the talks were held at a military section of the Kabul airport where the Turkish embassy is temporarily stationed.
"We have held our first talks with the Taliban, which lasted 3.5 hours," Erdogan told reporters. "If necessary, we will have the opportunity to hold such talks again."
Responding to criticism over Turkey's engagement with the Taliban, Erdogan said Ankara had "no luxury" to stand idly given the unstable situation in the region.
"You cannot know what their expectations are or what our expectations are without talking. What's diplomacy, my friend? This is diplomacy," Erdogan said.
Turkey had been planning to help secure and run Kabul's strategic airport, but on Wednesday it started pulling troops out of Afghanistan, which has been interpreted as meaning Ankara is abandoning this possibility.
Erdogan said the Taliban now wanted to oversee security at the airport, while offering Ankara the option of running its logistics.
Italy says its last flight from Kabul in hours
[AlAhram] Italy's foreign minister has confirmed that the last Italian military flight evacuating people from Afghanistan will depart from Kabul later on Friday. Luigi Di Maio said that among those aboard the departing C-130 Air Force aircraft will be the Italian consul, who had stayed on in Kabul at the airport to oversee the evacuation of Italians and foreigners, as well as the top NATO diplomat, Stefano Pontecorvo, who is Italian.
Also aboard will be Italian Carabinieri paramilitary police and Italian soldiers who helped maintain security for evacuations carried out by Italy. ``All the Italians who wanted to return to Italy have returned,'' Di Maio said. Some 4,900 Afghan citizens were also evacuated to Italy, the minister told reporters.
New Zealand unable to get everyone out it wanted
[AlAhram] New Zealand says it was not able to get everybody it wanted out of Afghanistan in time before the deadly attacks near Kabul’s airport brought its rescue mission to an end. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Friday she is not yet sure how many people were left behind or whether they were New Zealand citizens, residents or visa holders. She said the New Zealand military had gone to great lengths to try and find people in recent days and had been able to fly several hundred people to safety.
Sweden says it has finished its evacuations from Kabul following airport blast
[IsraelTimes] Sweden says it has ended its evacuations out of Kabul, after airlifting more than 1,100 people to Sweden in the wake of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. Those evacuated included embassy employees and their families, locally employed guards and their families, members of the armed forces and 500 Swedes, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde says. In addition, Sweden also evacuated women’s rights activists, journalists and European Union employees.
But Sweden was unable to assist all those on the “Sweden list” consisting of people seeking help to flee the country.
Meanwhile, neighboring Norway, which announced Thursday that it was also ending its evacuations, says today that another 128 people had landed in Oslo, bringing the number of people airlifted by the country to 1,098. A final plane was expected later in Norway Friday.
Spain announces end to its Kabul airlifts after flying out 2,200 people
[IsraelTimes] Spain announces the end of its Kabul evacuations after a nine-day operation that saw more than 2,200 people flown out of the strife-torn country following the Taliban takeover. The last two planes arrived in Dubai early on Friday, ending an airlift that began on August 18.
“In total, we have managed to evacuate 2,206 people,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says, indicating the number was almost three times higher than expected and hailing the work involved in a mission of “extraordinary complexity.”
He says most of the people evacuated were Afghans, including 1,671 — and their families — who worked for Spain. Some 333 worked for the European Union, 50 who worked for NATO as well as 21 Portuguese or Afghans working for Portugal. He says another 131 were evacuated on behalf of the United States.
Sanchez says Spain did not have “an exact number” of Afghan collaborators who were left behind but was working on “a way to continue getting them out.”
300 GERMAN NATIONALS LEFT BEHIND IN AFGHANISTAN
After Germany ended its air bridge between Kabul and Tashkent, the foreign ministry announced that around 300 German nationals remain in the country. Another 10,000 Afghans who were eligible for evacuation were also left behind.
Visas for Afghan nationals were being processed after arrival due to the complicated situation in Kabul, a spokesperson for the interior ministry said. It turned out that four people were flown to Germany who had previously been deported, one of which "went straight back into detention."
STATE DEPARTMENT DENIES REPORT IT GAVE TALIBAN LISTS OF NAMES
State Department spokesman Ned Price partially denied a report published in Politico Thursday that said lists of names of US citizens and Afghans, including fearful special immigrant visa applicants, were given to the Taliban.
Price said it was simply wrong that the US State Department had given lists with personally identifiable information to the Taliban.
The death toll in the suicide bombing rose to 169 Afghans, a number that could increase as authorities examine fragmented remains, and 13 US service members.
The Pentagon said Friday that there was just one suicide bomber — at the airport gate — not two, as US officials initially said. A US official said that the suicide bomber carried a heavier-than-usual load of about 25 pounds of explosives, loaded with shrapnel.
The US official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss preliminary assessments of the attack. The officials who gave the Afghan death toll also spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
On the morning after the attack, the Taliban used a pickup truck full of fighters and three captured Humvees to set up a barrier 500 meters (1,600 feet) from the airport, holding the crowds farther back from the US troops at the gates than before.
US military officials said that some gates were closed and other security measures put in place. They said there were tighter restrictions at Taliban checkpoints and fewer people around the gates. The military said it had also asked the Taliban to close certain roads because of the possibility of suicide bombers in vehicles.
The Pentagon said the US would keep up manned and unmanned flights over the airport for surveillance and protection, including the use of AC-130 gunships.
US officials said evacuees with proper credentials still were being allowed through the gates. Inside, about 5,400 evacuees awaited flights.
The White House said Friday afternoon that US military aircraft had flown out 2,100 evacuees in the previous 24 hours. Another 2,100 people left on other coalition flights.
The number was a fraction of the 12,700 people carried out by US military aircraft one day early in the week, when the now two-week-old airlift not only met but exceeded intended capacity for a couple days.
France ended its own evacuation effort and pulled up stakes on a temporary French embassy at the airport, leaving Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. US allies and others have ended or are ending their airlifts, in part to give the US time to wrap up its own operations.
The Taliban have said they will allow Afghans to leave via commercial flights after the U.S. withdrawal, but it is unclear which airlines would return to an airport controlled by the militants. 
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Posted by trailing wife 2021-08-28 00:00||
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