Kabul airport reopens

Ariana Afghan Airlines resumed some flights in Afghanistan between Kabul and three major provincial cities on Saturday, the carrier said, after a technical team from Qatar reopened the capital's airport for aid and domestic services.

Flights between Kabul and the western city of Herat, Mazar-i Sharif in northern Afghanistan and Kandahar in the south have started, the airline said in a statement.

"Ariana Afghan Airlines is proud to resume its domestic flights," it said.

Earlier, Qatar's ambassador to Afghanistan said a technical team was able to reopen Kabul airport to receive aid, according to Qatar's Al Jazeera news channel.

The airport's runway has been repaired in cooperation with authorities in Afghanistan, the ambassador said, according to Al Jazeera, in a further small step towards a return to relative normality after the turmoil of the past three weeks.

Reopening the airport, a vital lifeline with both the outside world and across Afghanistan's mountainous territory has been a high priority for the Taliban as they seek to restore order after their lightning seizure of Kabul on 15^th August 2021.

Kabul airport had been closed since the end of the massive US-led airlift of its citizens, other Western nationals and Afghans who helped Western countries. The end of that evacuation of tens of thousands of people marked the withdrawal of the last US forces from Afghanistan after 20 years of war.

Thousands of people wanting to leave Afghanistan, fearful of life under Taliban rule, were left behind when the evacuation operation ended at the end of August.

The Taliban, the West's adversary in the two-decade war that followed the 11^th September 2001 attacks on the United States, have promised safe passage for those wanting to leave.

 

What is the reality of over the horizon military strike in Afghanistan?

Reportedly the United States has undertaken ‘an over the horizon’ military strike against an ISIS-K planner, which has been termed successful. The statement of over the horizon military strike has the lowest credibility. It is believed that a drone has been used and the next question to ponder is which airbase has been used in this strike?

The United States military conducted a military strike against an ISIS-K planner in what appeared to be a retaliatory attack for a suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport that killed 13 US service members and injured at least 100 Afghans. 

Capt. Bill Urban, a spokesman for US Central Command, said in a statement that military forces conducted an “over the horizon counterterrorism operation today against an ISIS-K planner” in the Nangahar Province of Afghanistan.

ISIS-K is based in the Nagarhar and Kunar provinces east of Kabul, according to NBC News.

“Initial indications are that we killed the target. We know of no civilian casualties,” Urban said.

ISIS-K militants claimed responsibility for Thursday’s attack, which occurred right outside of Abbey gate. Pentagon officials said earlier on Friday that a single attack was carried out by a suicide bomber, clarifying that a second attack had not occurred near a hotel adjacent to the airfield as was initially reported.

The drone strike, which took place early Saturday morning local time, comes after President Biden vowed on Thursday target ISIS-K facilities “at the place we choose, in a moment of our choosing.” 

 “We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay,” Biden said.

Earlier on Friday the US Embassy in Kabul warned the US citizens who are at the airport's Abbey gate, East gate, North gate or the New Ministry of Interior gate to “leave immediately” due to “security threats.”