Tagged: Kabul

August 16th, 2021 Breaking News

US Terror Threat Concerns Rise as Taliban Hold Grows

NEWSMAX — America’s top general said the United States could now face a rise in terrorist threats from a Taliban-run Afghanistan. That warning comes as intelligence agencies charged with anticipating those threats face new questions after the U.S.-backed Afghan military collapsed with shocking speed.

Less than a week after a military assessment predicted Kabul could be surrounded by insurgents in 30 days, the world on Sunday watched stunning scenes of Taliban fighters standing in the Afghan president’s office and crowds of Afghans and foreigners frantically trying to board planes to escape the country.

Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told senators on a briefing call Sunday that U.S. officials are expected to alter their earlier assessments about the pace of terrorist groups reconstituting in Afghanistan, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

In June, the Pentagon’s top leaders said an extremist group like al-Qaida may be able to regenerate in Afghanistan and pose a threat to the U.S. homeland within two years of the American military’s withdrawal from the country. Two decades after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban harbored al-Qaida leaders, experts say the Taliban and al-Qaida remain aligned, and other violent groups could also find safe haven under the new regime.

Based on the evolving situation, officials now believe terror groups like al-Qaida may be able to grow much faster than expected, according to the person, who had direct knowledge of the briefing but was not authorized to discuss the details of the call publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

The Biden administration officials on the call with senators – among them were Milley, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin — said U.S. intelligence agencies are working on forming a new timeline based on the evolving threats, the person familiar with the matter said.

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August 15th, 2021 Breaking News

‘They are going to kill us’: Afghans terrorized as Kabul embassy tells Americans shelter in place

JUST THE NEWS — People in Kabul reported chaos in the streets Sunday as Afghans try to escape the encroaching Taliban while exit routes, including commercial air flights, increasingly are closed. 

“Things are manic,” one person told Just the News from inside Kabul on Sunday. “There is gunfire, and people are fleeing.”

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul issued a security bulletin announcing a deteriorating situation at the last seemingly viable exit point, Hamid Karzai International Airport, just outside the city center.

“There are reports of the airport taking fire; therefore we are instructing U.S. citizens to shelter in place,” the embassy wrote in the Aug. 15 bulletin. Any U.S. citizens wanting help should register on the embassy website, the bulletin read. Afghans seeking visas should also register, even if they already have sent information to the embassy, the bulletin noted.

A video viewed by Just the News depicts the streets filled with cars blaring their horns, while ordinary citizens – men, women, and young children – hastily walk while talking on cell phones and carrying bags of belongings.

The scene unfolded rapidly amid a long-telegraphed Taliban advance on Kabul that nonetheless seemed to come as a surprise as it evolved in the overnight hours. The breakthrough came around 2:45 a.m. EDT, when contacts in Kabul reported that the city had been breached.

The breach spurred intense action among official and private networks, as Westerners scrambled to help their friends and co-workers exit the besieged country. It also spurred a furious exchange of information and rumors, including the story that one American company sent its workers home from the airport on the understanding that they would be evacuated, and now they are trapped inside the city. Just the News was not able to immediately reach the company for comment.

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August 15th, 2021 Breaking News

President Ashraf Ghani Flees Afghanistan

BREITBART — President Ashraf Ghani fled Afghanistan on Sunday following the arrival of Taliban forces to the nation’s capital, Kabul, Afghan outlet Tolo News reported.

Tolo added that, according to Taliban sources, Ghani had agreed to a formal resignation. Ghani reportedly took his top aides with him.

Reuters reported on Sunday the Taliban were still working to confirm Ghani’s whereabouts as of press time. Ghani’s office declined to comment on his apparent abandonment of the nation, refusing to “say anything about Ashraf Ghani’s movement for security reasons.” The outlet suggested he was bound for neighboring Tajikistan, like many Afghan troops fleeing the battlefield.

Ghani has served as president since 2014.

Ghani appeared before the nation in a pre-recorded speech on Saturday claiming that he was working to “remobilize” the Afghan military to fight the Taliban.

“Under the current situation, remobilizing of the security and defense forces is our top priority and required measures are underway for this purpose,” Ghani said, vowing to work to prevent “further killings, loss of the gains of the last 20 years, destruction of public property and continued instability.”

Ghani’s reported flight follows the Taliban reconquest of many of the nation’s major cities, including Herat and Kandahar. While Kabul has yet to fall, American forces and those of allied nations are scrambling to evacuate their civilian personnel, expecting the Taliban to claim the city at any time.

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April 30th, 2018 Related News

Slain Young Journalists Saw Their Work As A Way To Make Afghanistan A Better Place

(GANDHARA) — Radio Free Afghanistan journalist Abadullah Hananzai was furious on April 25 when he learned that a former colleague had been gunned down at a market in Kandahar in an apparent targeted killing.

“The murder of my former colleague at Kabul News, a great journalist named Abdul Manan Arghand, has greatly upset me,” Hananzai wrote in Pashto on his Facebook page. “Arghand is now a martyr for freedom of speech.”

It would be Hananzai’s last public Facebook post.

Hananzai and Radio Free Afghanistan video producer Sabawoon Kakar were among multiple journalists killed in a suicide bombing in Kabul on April 30. The journalists were covering an earlier suicide attack when a second bomber, disguised as a reporter, approached them and detonated his explosives.

Maharram Durrani, a 28-year-old university student who was training to become a journalist at the Kabul bureau of RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan, was also killed.

Claimed by Islamic State militants, the blasts killed at least 25 and injured 45. The Afghan Journalists Center said that, with nine reporters killed, it marked the deadliest attack against journalists in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.

Abadullah Hananzai

Hananzai was a video journalist who had been working since October 2016 on an antinarcotics project at RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan — a project called Caravan Of Poison.

A graduate of Kabul University, Hananzai was 26 years old and was preparing to celebrate his first wedding anniversary on May 8.

He previously had worked for Kabul News and for Zhwandoon TV, as well as for the Educational and Cultural Center for Afghan Women.

Hananzai’s recent reports for RFE/RL focused on the social and economic implications of drug addiction in Afghanistan, as well as efforts by the Interior Ministry to crack down on international narcotics trafficking out of Afghanistan.

One of Hananzai’s last Facebook posts was a message in English on April 19 and a photograph taken of himself in the compound of Radio Free Afghanistan’s Kabul bureau shortly after a rainstorm.

“Feeling fantastic. I find Peace in the Rain,” Hananzai said.

Sabawoon Kakar

Kakar was one of the first journalists to arrive at the scene of the first suicide bombing in Kabul on the morning of April 30.

He died from his injuries at a hospital in Kabul several hours after the second blast.

Kakar was a key member of Radio Free Afghanistan’s video team over the past five years.

His work included feature stories about social issues in Afghanistan — such as the status of women’s cricket in the country — as well as news about counterterrorism operations and security issues.

Kakar’s last video report was on April 29 — a package he produced with RFE/RL reporters in the northern Afghan province of Baghlan about a battle between Afghan security forces and Taliban militants.

“He was often covering the aftermath of suicide attacks and other dangerous spot news situations,” said Qadir Habib, a senior editor for Radio Free Afghanistan. “He was a brave man who was never afraid to cover dangerous stories.”

On his Facebook page, Kakar declared that despite bombing attacks against voter registration centers in Kabul, he had registered and planned to vote in Afghanistan’s October 20 parliamentary elections.

The 30-year-old Kakar, a native of Kabul, died one day before his fifth anniversary as an RFE/RL journalist. He is survived by his wife and a two-year-old son.

Maharram Durrani was a third-year student of Islamic law at Kabul University who was just starting her career as a journalist.

Durrani was being trained to take part in the weekly woman’s program RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan — a job she was due to start on May 15.

She previously worked for an Afghan online music channel called Radio Salam Watandar.

“When I began working in media, one of my first bosses asked me why I was studying Islamic law but working in media,” Durrani told RFE/RL during a February phone-in program.

“He said these are not related subjects. But I said, ‘No, that’s not true’,” Durrani explained. “It’s very much related because the media can provide information to all people.”

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April 22nd, 2018 Breaking News

Kabul Bombing Kills 57 in Line for Voter ID Cards

(VOA) — A suicide bomber struck a distribution center for Afghan voters’ identification cards Sunday morning in Kabul, killing at least 57 people and wounding more than 100 others.

Interior Ministry spokesman Najeeb Danish told VOA that people were waiting in line outside the center to get their Tazkira, or identification card, to be able to vote in the election when the bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body.

Hospital sources have described condition of a least ten wounded people as “highly critical”.

Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah has condemned the “terrorist” attack on the center set up in a Kabul school.

“I stand with those affected by this coward attack. Our resolve for fair and transparent election will continue and terrorists won’t win against the will of the Afghan people,” Abdullah wrote on his official Twitter account.

President Ashraf Ghani launched the voter registration process last week, allowing the Independent Election Commission to prepare voter lists for the October 20 parliamentary and district council elections. This will be the first time in Afghani history that elections will be held on the basis of formal voters lists.

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May 31st, 2017 Breaking News

Massive Kabul truck bomb kills 80, wounds hundreds

(AFT) — At least 80 people were killed and hundreds wounded Wednesday when a massive truck bomb ripped through Kabul’s diplomatic quarter, bringing carnage to the streets of the Afghan capital and blowing out windows several miles away.

Bodies littered the scene and a huge cloud of smoke rose from the highly-fortified area which houses foreign embassies, after the rush-hour attack tore a massive crater in the ground just days into the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan.

No group has so far claimed the powerful blast, which a Western diplomatic source said was caused by 1,500 kilograms of explosives packed inside a water tanker.

Rescue workers were digging bodies from the rubble hours after the explosion as anguished residents struggled to get through security cordons to search for missing relatives. Dozens of damaged cars choked the roads as wounded survivors and panicked schoolgirls sought safety.

It was not immediately clear what the target was. But the attack suggests a major security failure and underscores spiraling insecurity in Afghanistan, where the NATO-backed military, beset by soaring casualties and desertions, is struggling to beat back insurgents.

Over a third of the country is outside government control.

“Unfortunately the toll has reached 80 martyred (killed) and over 300 wounded, including many women and children,” said health ministry spokesman Waheed Majroh, adding the figures would continue to climb as more bodies are pulled from the debris.

President Ashraf Ghani slammed the attack as a “war crime”.

The Taliban — currently in the midst of their annual “spring offensive” — tweeted that they were not involved and “strongly condemn” the blast. The insurgent group rarely claims responsibility for attacks that kill large numbers of civilians.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for several recent bombings in the Afghan capital, including a powerful blast targeting a NATO convoy that killed eight people earlier this month.

The sound of the bomb, which went off near Kabul’s busy Zanbaq Square, reverberated across the Afghan capital, with residents comparing it to an earthquake. Most victims appear to be civilians.

“The vigilance and courage of Afghan security forces prevented the VBIED (vehicle-borne improvised explosive device) from gaining entry to the Green Zone, but the explosion caused civilian casualties,” NATO said in a statement.

– Embassies damaged –

The BBC said its Afghan driver Mohammed Nazir was killed and four of their journalists wounded. Local TV channel Tolo TV also tweeted that a staff member Aziz Navin was killed.

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