![]() ![]() Thousands of human rights activists were stranded, some sheltering with friends and moving every day to avoid arrest by the Taliban. “We are running out of supplies and scrambling now to see how we can get the next shipment in,” said Richard Brennan, the regional emergencies chief of the World Health Organization.Īs tragic as are the images of people clinging to a departing American plane, he said, “the bigger humanitarian picture has been lost in all this.” Relief agencies are struggling to bring food, medicine and other urgently needed supplies into Afghanistan, according to officials. The bottleneck at the airfield threatened to set off another humanitarian crisis. While the president spoke of the heartbreak of the past week and said there would be plenty of time for “criticism and second-guessing,” he was defiant that leaving Afghanistan now was the right move. They had intended to walk the 200 yards to the airfield, but local commanders, concerned about a crowd at the gate, decided to send the CH-47 helicopters, which loaded the passengers and made the short hop to the airfield without incident, said John F. In one case, the United States dispatched three helicopters to pick up 169 Americans who had gathered at a hotel near the airport. Biden said the United States was communicating with Taliban officials to guarantee safe passage for those who wanted to leave.īut many people are hiding in their homes, fearful of reprisals if they were captured by militants. The man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared for his safety, said he had tried and failed six times in recent days to reach the airport “She was dead, and her father was crying.” ![]() “I saw a teenage girl trampled yesterday.” “It is impossible to get to the airport - if you keep going and pushing, you may get shot dead and lose your life,” one Afghan man said on Friday. ![]() In video posted to social media by the BBC, troops ordered people away from the entrance.įootage showed a soldier hurling a man to the ground. On the airport’s eastern perimeter, hundreds of Afghans jostled with British soldiers as they tried to get into a British-controlled compound. The staccato pops of gunfire mixed with the roar of planes taking off. While the south side of the airfield - the site of anguished scenes earlier in the week - was calmer on Friday, a witness reported that the gate at the north side, where American troops are in control, was mobbed.Īmerican-trained Afghan special forces units pushed back the crowds, some shooting in the air. Many more people were simply turned away, repulsed by reddish clouds of tear gas and volleys of rifle fire above their heads. Thousands of Afghans continued to besiege the airport gates, begging to get on planes as Taliban militants menaced them with sticks and rifle butts. Biden pledged not to abandon American citizens or Afghans who helped the United States, he left untold others in a dangerous limbo, conceding, “I cannot promise what the final outcome will be.” The president’s reassuring words, however, conflicted jarringly with the grim reality in Kabul, where panic reigned and the Taliban encircled the airport in a ring of terror. “Any American who wants to come home, we will get you home.” LONDON - The desperate scenes at the Kabul airport reverberated around the world on Friday, forcing President Biden to defend his handling of the chaotic evacuation and fueling recrimination from American allies that are struggling to get their own citizens out of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. What a mess the Democrats and Joe Biden and all the fools who put him in office have created!Ĭonsider the New York Times article just out entitled “Biden Defends Evacuation as Thousands Besiege Kabul Airport” by Mark Landler on 22 August 2021, as follows: ![]()
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