US military planes are doing rapid diving combat landings to beat the threat of a missile attack, with a video showing a French transport plane yesterday deploying flares designed to confuse heat-seeking technology.
Taliban forces controlling all access points to Hamid Karzai International Airport are not thought to be attempting to shoot down military aircraft during the Western evacuation effort, as such an action could trigger another American-led intervention in Afghanistan.
But US military officials have said they fear a possible attack by the Islamic State group affiliate in Afghanistan. It is feared the terrorists could use stolen heat-seeking missiles to bring down a rescue plane carrying hundreds of refugees including women and children.
ISIS militants have been fighting the Taliban for the last six years as they attempt to annex their own piece of Afghanistan following the collapse of their empire – or ‘caliphate’ – in Syria and Iraq following the Western bombing of those countries.
Afghans at Kabul airport have described seeing more than 15 people including a two-year-old girl shot and beaten to death by the Taliban or trampled to death in the melee as thousands of locals desperately trying to escape the new regime.
