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28 Taliban fighters killed in IS attack on Kabul airport

Just Earth News | @justearthnews | 27 Aug 2021

28 Taliban fighters killed in IS attack on Kabul airport

Image Credit: UNI

A Taliban official told Reuters on Friday that at least 28 members of the hardline Islamist group were among the people killed in explosions overnight outside the airport in Kabul.

"We have lost more people than the Americans," the official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters.

He said there was no reason to extend the August 31 deadline for foreign forces to leave the country.

According to different media reports, as many as 110 to 103 people, including 13 US soldiers were killed in the suicide blasts by ISIL (ISIS) offshoot in Afghanistan, The Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K), who targeted “translators and collaborators with the American army.

After the Kabul bomb attack, the Taliban expedited the government formation process.

The militant group told Al Jazeera that it is planning an inclusive caretaker government in Afghanistan.

The caretaker government will include leaders from all ethnicities and tribal backgrounds in the country, Taliban told Al Jazeera.

They said a supreme leadership council has been convened to decide the form of the future government and nominate ministers, stated the Al Jazeera report.

Ministers to the judiciary, internal security, defence, foreign affairs, finance, information portfolios as well as a special assignment for Kabul’s affairs are to be nominated.

Taliban co-founder Mullah Baradar is in Kabul, while Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, son of Taliban founder Mullah Omar, has travelled from Kandahar for the initial consultations on government formation, Al Jazeera reported citing sources.

Taliban wants to include the sons of Tajik and Uzbek tribal leaders in what it describes as an effort to include new faces.

They said the United States has been insisting on bringing in some members of the older governments, including former President Hamid Karzai and former Head of Afghanistan’s High Council for National Reconciliation Abdullah Abdullah, the report informed.

Another Taliban source told Al Jazeera that the group remains committed to the 2020 Doha accord it signed with the US, including not allowing Afghan soil to be used to launch terror attacks.