Rockets fired at Kabul airport

KABUL: Rockets were fired at Kabul’s airport on Monday where US troops were racing to complete their withdrawal from Afghanistan and evacuate allies under the threat of Islamic State group attacks.

The Islamic State-Khorasan group claimed the attack Monday on the airport in Afghanistan’s capital. “The soldiers of the caliphate targeted Kabul’s international airport with six... rockets,” the group said in a statement.

Biden had warned more attacks were highly likely and the United States said it carried out an air strike on Sunday night in Kabul on an IS-prepared car bomb. That was followed on Monday morning by rockets being fired at the airport.

The White House confirmed there had been a rocket attack directed at the airport, but said operations there were “uninterrupted”. “The President... has reconfirmed his order that commanders redouble their efforts to prioritise doing whatever is necessary to protect our forces on the ground,” the White House statement said.

An AFP photographer on Monday took images of a destroyed car with a launcher system still visible in the back seat. A suspected US drone strike had hit the car, about two kilometres (1.2 miles) from the airport.

A Taliban official at the scene said he believed five rockets had been fired, and all were destroyed by the airport´s missile defence systems. While there were no reports of fatalities or airport damage from the rocket attacks, they caused greater anxieties for locals already traumatised by years of war.

“Since the Americans have taken control of the airport, we can´t sleep properly,” Abdullah, who lives near the airport, told AFP.“It is either gun firing, rockets, sirens or sounds of huge planes that disturb us. And now that they are being directly targeted, it can put our lives in danger.”

Meanwhile, the Taliban spokesman said they will crack down on Islamic State attacks and expects them to end once foreign forces leave the country.“We hope that those Afghans who are influenced by IS... will give up their operations on seeing the formation of an Islamic government in the absence of foreigners,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP in a weekend interview.

“If they create a situation for war and continue with their operations, the Islamic government... we will deal with them,” he added.Mujahid reiterated that the new Taliban government will not be announced until after the last US soldier has left.

“It is important to announce the government but this requires a lot of patience. We are holding consultations to form the government responsibly,” Mujahid said.“We have some technical problems on this issue,” he added.