A firefight occurred in the chaos occurring at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport earlier today as foreign forces kept trying to speed up evacuations of thousands of Afghans who are desperately trying to flee their country, which has been taken over by the Taliban one week ago.
The events lead to the death of one Afghan security personnel and three others wounded when the firefight broke out between the unknown attackers and the Afghan security forces, according to an official account of the German Joint Forces Operation tweet.
The German military revealed that American and German forces were implied in the fight, but the entirety of the German forces on the ground was unharmed.
The last week at Kabul’s airport took the world by surprise, as we’ve seen images of mothers desperately throwing their babies to foreign soldiers over barbed-wire walls. Some civilians were so desperate that they hopelessly clung to airplanes as they took off in an attempt to leave the troubled region.
The violence is partly the result of the Joe Biden administration criticizing the follow-up fallout to the pullout from Afghanistan.
According to Biden, the U.S. military evacuated twenty-eight thousand people from the country since August. 14, but there are still thousands of Americans left there.
The Pentagon revealed that the U.S. military couldn’t provide safe passage for Americans to Kabul airport, though there are intense forces present on the ground.
Biden has just activated the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, a rarely-used program where the Pentagon commended civilian airlines for supporting the evacuation efforts by providing designated planes.
A Taliban sniper opens fire at the Kabul airport, German and U.S. troops return fire. https://t.co/TlC1pUiF6s
— Bill Roggio (@billroggio) August 23, 2021
The measure leads to the collection of 18 aircraft from six airlines.
Biden also added that the administration is thinking of postponing the full troop withdrawal beyond the initial August 31 date.
“Our hope is we will not have to extend, but there are going to be discussions, I suspect, on how far along we are in the process,” the president stated.
Unfortunately, the Taliban won’t extend the August 31 deadline, as per a Reuters report mentioning two anonymous Taliban sources.
The sources also mentioned that no Western authorities had contacted the group regarding a possible delay of the deadline, as per a CNBC report.
In a recent press communication, Vice President Kamal Harris stated:
“Right now we are singularly focused on evacuating American citizens, Afghans who worked with us and Afghans who are vulnerable, including women and children. We have a responsibility and we feel a deep commitment to making sure that folks who helped us are safe.”
