We were the ones to warn NATO about potential terrorist plot targeting Kabul airport, Taliban spokesman tells Russian media

 

26 Aug, 2021 10:55 / Updated 21 seconds ago

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The Taliban has claimed credit for tipping off NATO forces about a potential terrorist plot targeting Hamid Karzai international airport. The would-be bomb attack was meant to discredit them, an official said.

An “imminent attack” in Kabul airport hatched by Islamist militants was reported earlier by the British Armed Forces Minister James Heappey, who called the intelligence “very, very credible”.

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Zabihullah Mujahid, who holds the office of Information Minister in the Taliban-installed government in Afghanistan, told the Russian media that his organization was the source of the information. The threat was not specific, he said in an interview, but the plan was to provoke chaos and violence at the airport and hurt the Taliban’s reputation.

“Over the last 20 years we have learned things and changed,” the official said in the interview. “We want to prove that we are not what anti-Taliban propaganda has portrayed us to be. We want to show that to the world.”

The Taliban seized control of Kabul earlier this month, triggering a collapse of the NATO-backed government and prompting a hectic evacuation of tens of thousands of people through the Kabul airport. The US and its allies were given time until the end of August to fully pull out from Afghanistan.