Source: CNN
44% of Afghan refugees housed temporarily at eight US military bases are children, according to a letter from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to Sen. James Inhofe, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
34% of the refugee population at the bases are adult men, and 22% are adult women, the letter which is dated October 8 states.
Source: CNN
One of the largest evacuation flights departed Kabul on Sunday with an unknown number of Americans on board and is on its way to Doha, a senior Qatari government official tells CNN.
The ninth evacuation flight from Afghanistan since August 31 is carrying 353 evacuees, including faculty, staff, and students from the American University of Afghanistan, as well as citizens from Afghanistan, the United States, the Netherlands, Denmark and Australia, among others, according to the official.
Source: BBC
The US government has offered financial compensation to the relatives of 10 people mistakenly killed by the American military in a drone strike on the Afghan capital, Kabul, in August.
An aid worker and nine members of his family, including seven children, died in the strike.
Source: France24/AFP
Afghan teenager Amena saw dozens of classmates killed when her girls’ school was targeted by an Islamic State bomb attack in May, but she was determined to continue her education.
Now, like most secondary school girls in the country, she is banned from lessons altogether after the Taliban’s hardline government excluded them from returning to class one month ago.
Source: Al Jazeera
A mass funeral ceremony has been held for the victims killed in Friday’s suicide bomb attack on a Shia mosque in Afghanistan’s southern city of Kandahar.
Government officials say 47 people died in the attack but a community elder Haji Farhad said the death toll is 63 but can change as still many victims are in serious condition in the hospital.
Source: Al Jazeera
The withdrawal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan is inevitably leaving a political vacuum in South and Central Asia. The question that many are asking is who will step in to fill it. Afghanistan’s immediate neighbours – Pakistan, Iran and China – all have special interests in the country that they are likely to pursue with renewed vigour.
Source: RFE/RL
Anti-Taliban resistance leader Ahmad Masud briefly visited Dushanbe for Afghan peace talks — sponsored by Tajikistan and Pakistan — but Taliban representatives failed to attend, sources close to the Tajik government told RFE/RL.
Three sources told RFE/RL that Masud’s trip to Dushanbe took place shortly after Tajik President Emomali Rahmon said on September 17 that his country would host negotiations between the new Afghan rulers and Masud’s predominantly ethnic Tajik resistance force based in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Province.
Source: openDemocracy
“We have a duty to help our Afghan colleagues and their families,” said Raffaele Lorusso. “Journalists and European and Western media,” he continued, “can’t remain indifferent” to the peril they face since the Taliban takeover in August.
Lorusso, who is general secretary of the National Federation of Italian Journalists (FNSI), is one of numerous journalists and other media workers around the world, from Italy to India, who have stepped up to support their colleagues in Afghanistan.
Source: The Guardian
A teenage Afghan refugee was stabbed to death on a sports field in south-west London in front of schoolchildren playing rugby.
The victim, named as 18-year-old Hazrat Wali, from Notting Hill, was attacked at about 4.45pm on Tuesday on Craneford Way, Twickenham, yards away from Richmond upon Thames College, which he attended.
Source: CNN
Residents of Kabul can read the writing on the wall. “Don’t trust the propaganda of the enemy” says one freshly painted sign.
The message replaced a mural of US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar shaking hands, marking the signing of the 2020 agreement to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan — one of dozens of vibrant public artworks that have been erased since the Taliban took power in August.