{"id":36138,"date":"2021-08-30T11:01:01","date_gmt":"2021-08-30T02:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/live\/2021\/aug\/30\/afghanistan-live-news-kabul-taliban-latest-updates-airport-attack-islamic-state-isis-k-us-drone-strike-civilians-children-killed-deaths-reported"},"modified":"2021-08-30T22:04:27","modified_gmt":"2021-08-30T13:04:27","slug":"afghanistan-live-news-us-assessing-reports-of-civilian-deaths-in-drone-strike-un-to-discuss-taliban-promise-of-safe-passage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=36138","title":{"rendered":"Afghanistan live news: rockets fired at Kabul airport as US approaches withdrawal deadline"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thwarted attack comes after reports of civilian deaths following drone strikes by the US in the Afghan capital<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/aug\/30\/shoeless-shivering-passing-out-afghan-refugees-arrive-in-the-uk\">Shoeless, shivering, passing out: Afghan refugees arrive in the UK<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/aug\/30\/kabul-airport-comes-under-rocket-fire-as-us-afghanistan-evacuation-enters-final-48-hours\">Kabul airport comes under rocket fire as US evacuation enters final phase<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/afghanistan\">See all our Afghanistan coverage<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"block-time published-time\"> <time datetime=\"2021-08-30T13:04:27.256Z\">2.04pm <span class=\"timezone\">BST<\/span><\/time> <\/p>\n<p>Talks are due in Doha and New York to try to reach an international consensus on the conditions for recognising the Taliban government in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/afghanistan\">Afghanistan<\/a>. There are signs of tensions between superpowers after Russia called on the US to release Afghan central bank reserves that Washington blocked after the Taliban\u2019s takeover of Kabul earlier this month.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf our western colleagues are actually worried about the fate of the Afghan people, then we must not create additional problems for them by freezing gold and foreign exchange reserves,\u201d said the Kremlin\u2019s envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov.<\/p>\n<p> <span>Related: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/aug\/30\/international-talks-consensus-taliban-government\">International talks aim for consensus on Taliban government<\/a> <\/p>\n<p class=\"block-time published-time\"> <time datetime=\"2021-08-30T12:29:39.409Z\">1.29pm <span class=\"timezone\">BST<\/span><\/time> <\/p>\n<p>Politico <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2021\/08\/30\/pentagon-mass-casualty-attack-kabul-507481\">is reporting<\/a> that US commanders had planned to close gates at the airport on Thursday, fearing an attack, but chose to keep them open to allow the British to continue to evacuate.<\/p>\n<p>Hours later a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest at the airport, killing nearly 200 people, including 13 US service members.<\/p>\n<p>Commanders calling in from Kabul relayed that the Abbey Gate, where American citizens had been told to gather in order to gain entrance to the airport, was \u201chighest risk,\u201d and detailed their plans to protect the airport.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t believe people get the incredible amount of risk on the ground,\u201d Austin said, according to the classified notes.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">This appears as close to confirmation as we\u2019re going to get from the MoD that, per <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/laraseligman?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@laraseligman<\/a> POLITICO scoop, the Americans wanted to close the gates at Kabul airport sooner fearing an attack, but kept them open to allow Britain to continue evacuating <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/itrLxnAck7\">https:\/\/t.co\/itrLxnAck7<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/NIbSyNPvRv\">pic.twitter.com\/NIbSyNPvRv<\/a><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">A UK defence source says that for security reasons they will not comment on operational details<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/live\/2021\/aug\/30\/afghanistan-live-news-kabul-taliban-latest-updates-airport-attack-islamic-state-isis-k-us-drone-strike-civilians-children-killed-deaths-reported\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thwarted attack comes after reports of civilian deaths following drone strikes by the US in the Afghan capitalShoeless, shivering, passing out: Afghan refugees arrive in the UKKabul airport comes under rocket fire as US evacuation enters final phaseSee&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":371,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46,61,44,473,47,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-south-and-central-asia","category-taliban","category-us-military","category-us-news","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/371"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36138"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36168,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36138\/revisions\/36168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}