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A deadly firefight reignited chaos at Kabul airport on Monday, where thousands of Afghans waited to flee the country as the Taliban clashed with an emerging resistance movement in the north.
An Afghan soldier was killed and three others were wounded in the scuffle between Afghan security forces and “unknown assailants” at the north gate of the airport, the German army said in a statement. Tweeter.
He said US and German forces were also involved, adding that no German soldiers were injured. NBC News has contacted U.S. Central Command and NATO for comment. It was not immediately clear whether any American soldiers had been killed or injured.
The German military said in a subsequent tweet that the Afghan soldiers involved in the incident were “members of the Afghan army”, participating in a multinational operation to secure the airport.
It was not known how many Afghan soldiers were operating at the airport or elsewhere in Afghanistan.
The Afghan army, built and trained at a cost of $ 83 billion to the United States over twenty years, largely surrendered to the Taliban offensive across Afghanistan, which resulted in the collapse of the Afghan government and the flight of President Ashraf Ghani on August 15.
Kabul airport has remained a hotbed of violence and chaos since the Taliban takeover, as militants, patrolling the outer perimeter, used force to control the crowd and some people were crushed to death. On Saturday, two US defense officials warned of a possible ISIS threat to the airport, adding to concerns about its security.
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Since August 14, the United States has evacuated 28,000 people from Afghanistan, President Joe Biden told reporters on Sunday. But as concerns grew over thousands more desperate to escape, Biden said he was considering extending evacuation efforts beyond his Aug. 31 deadline to leave the country.
The Taliban warned the United States on Monday not to miss the deadline.
“It’s a red line. President Biden announced that on August 31 they would withdraw all their military forces. So if they extend it, that means they are extending the occupation when it is not necessary. movement spokesman Suhail Shaheen told Sky News. “If the United States or the United Kingdom asked for more time to continue the evacuations, the answer is no. Or there would be consequences.”
Over the weekend, the United States enlisted commercial aviation to help move evacuees from Kabul further overseas. Biden said on Sunday he was grateful to the six U.S. carriers who rallied, adding that his administration had reached deals with more than two dozen countries, including Qatar, Kuwait, Germany and Spain, to help treat Afghan evacuees.
Officials from three Balkan countries – North Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania – who have offered to host Afghan evacuees told NBC News that no refugees have been airlifted on U.S. flights to ‘now and they didn’t know when they would arrive.
On Monday, the Taliban said their fighters had secured three northern provinces and were now heading towards Panjshir, the last province that remains out of their control.
The Panjshir Valley, north of Kabul, saw several opposition figures gather there, including Amrullah Saleh, a senior official in the ousted Afghan government who had declared himself a “legitimate interim president”, and Ahmad Massoud, son of the assassinated commander of the Northern Alliance militias who teamed up with the United States to oust the Taliban from power in 2001.
Massoud told Reuters on Sunday that he hoped to have peaceful talks with the Taliban, but that his forces were ready to fight if the militants tried to invade the valley.
“They want to defend, they want to fight,” he said.
Andy Eckardt, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed.
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