Two explosions at Kabul airport cost the lives of numerous people. The search for those responsible begins.
Kabul – Two explosions rocked the airport near Kabul in Afghanistan on Thursday (August 26th, 2021). Numerous people are said to have lost their lives in the process. According to the US government, American citizens were also injured in the attack. The spokesman for the US Department of Defense, John Kirby, wrote on Thursday on Twitter and described the attack on one of the airport gates as a “complex attack”.
Initial assumptions suggest that the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” is behind the attacks. So it reported the US news magazine Politico, citing two US officials. It would be a message to the world, but also an embarrassment for the Taliban because they could not enforce their security guarantees. ISIS has repeatedly carried out attacks in Afghanistan in the past.
Warnings of terrorist attack at the airport in Kabul
The USA and other Western governments, including Germany, warned on Thursday (August 26th, 2021) of the terrorist threat posed by the “Islamic State” at the airport in Kabul and asked people to leave the area. Despite similar goals, the Taliban and the IS militia, which once emerged from the Al-Qaeda terrorist network, are enemies.
In Afghanistan, IS has set up a cell called “Wilaya Khorasan” (Khorasan province), reports Deutsche Welle. According to a study by the German Institute for International Politics and Security, IS declared the province of Khorasan as a regional offshoot for Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2015.
Explosions in Kabul: is IS behind the attacks?
In an interview with the same newspaper, the terrorism expert Guido Steinberg from the Science and Politics Foundation (SWP) in Berlin reported that one must now expect “that now not only IS, but also Al-Qaeda and smaller groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan are stronger According to information from the US news broadcaster CNN, Al-Qaeda factions could also have been responsible for the terrorist attack on the airport in Kabul.
Al-Qaeda has been keeping a low profile in Afghanistan for a long time. The Taliban and the terror network – that is the story of a long and close partnership. Al-Qaeda icon Osama bin Laden ordered the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from Afghanistan, which led to US military operations and the overthrow of the Taliban.
Thousands of people are waiting in and around the airport of the Afghan capital hoping to be evacuated from the country. According to the United States, around 95,700 people have been flown out of there since the radical Islamic Taliban came to power almost two weeks ago. (Marvin Ziegele)
List of rubric lists: © Wali Sabawoon / dpa
