Taliban supporters mocked U.S. soldiers and the service members of other NATO allies on Tuesday, parading flag-draped coffins through the city of Kost.
The Taliban celebrated the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, cheering after the last U.S. troops left the country on Monday after a weeks-long chaotic and rushed evacuation. The U.S. left behind potentially hundreds of American citizens and thousands of Afghans allies who worked with the U.S. military during its two decades in Afghanistan.
Reuters captured photos of the Taliban celebration in Kost showing supporters of the terror group hoisting coffins decorated with American, British, and French flags.
As Reuters reported:
The mock funeral, in which coffins covered in French and British flags were also carried along the street through a large crowd, marked the end of a 20-year war and a hasty and humiliating exit for Washington and its NATO allies.
Some of the crowd held guns aloft, while others waved Taliban flags or snapped the procession on mobile phones.
“August 31 is our formal Freedom Day. On this day, American occupying forces and NATO forces fled the country,” Taliban official Qari Saeed Khosti told local television station Zhman TV during its coverage of the event.
The display comes days after 13 U.S. service members were killed in a terror attack on Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, which served as the staging ground for U.S. and NATO evacuations after the Taliban took Kabul on August 15.
Last week, militants with the Islamic State-affiliated terror group ISIS-K attacked Karzai. A suicide bomber detonated near one of the airport’s main gates while other militants engaged in a gun battle with airport guards. In addition to the 13 U.S. troops killed, dozens of Afghan civilians died in the chaos.
The U.S. launched two drone strikes against alleged ISIS-K targets in response to the attack. One strike killed a purported planner for the terror group while another struck a car full of Afghan civilians, killing 10 people including children, according to reports.
As The Washington Post reported:
The dead were all from a single extended family who were exiting a car in their modest driveway when the strike hit a nearby vehicle, said Abdul Matin Azizi, a neighbor who saw the attack. Azizi, 20, said the explosion occurred as the family returned home Sunday afternoon around 4:30 p.m.
Azizi said he ran next door to help and found a gruesome scene, the air thick with smoke. “The bodies were covered in blood and shrapnel, and some of the dead children were still inside the car,” he said.
U.S. Central Command said the strike Sunday destroyed an Islamic State car bomb that posed an “imminent” threat to Kabul’s airport. It acknowledged reports of civilian casualties but did not release specifics. The attack is the second U.S. drone strike on Afghanistan in response to a suicide bombing and gunfire attack outside Kabul’s airport on Thursday.
The U.S. withdrawal has effectively stranded hundreds of American citizens still believed to be in Afghanistan, as well as thousands of Afghans who worked with the U.S. military during its two-decade occupation in the country.
The Biden White House has claimed that the U.S. holds an “enormous amount of leverage” over the Taliban that can be used to retrieve the stranded Americans and others. That leverage includes potential international aid to Afghans as well as “access to the global marketplace.”
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Source: Dailywire
