During the ongoing US pullout from Afghanistan, rockets struck a neighborhood near Kabul’s international airport on Monday. It wasn’t evident who started them right away.
Witnesses say the rockets hit Kabul’s Salim Karwan neighborhood on Monday morning. The blasts were quickly followed by gunfire, but it was unclear who was firing.
Witnesses who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation claimed they heard three explosions followed by a flare in the sky. According to them, people ran after the explosions.
Requests for comment from US officials were not immediately returned. Following the rocket attack, US military cargo planes continued to evacuate the airfield. After evacuating about 114,400 individuals, including foreign nationals and Afghans deemed “at danger,” in an operation that began the day before Kabul fell to the Taliban on August 15, US and NATO forces are on track to complete their own pullout by the Taliban-agreed deadline of Tuesday.
Over the weekend, the number of US troops manning the airport dropped below 4,000, as departures became more urgent following an Islamic State suicide bomb attack outside the gates on Thursday that killed scores of Afghans and 13 US personnel.
In Washington, officials briefed President Joe Biden about the “rocket attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA)” in Kabul, according to a White House statement.
“The president has been told that operations at HKIA are continuing without interruption and has reaffirmed his directive that commanders prioritize doing whatever is required to protect our personnel on the ground,” according to the statement.
