Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid issued statements in the early morning hours of Tuesday local time, asserting that the last American military forces in the country had left and assuring Kabul residents that gunfire and shouting in the city was the result of “joy” at the development.
The Pentagon confirmed the full withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country on Monday, hitting the August 31 deadline imposed by President Joe Biden this year. Biden changed the original deadline, May 1, that predecessor Donald Trump had set in an agreement with the Taliban, prompting the jihadist organization to declare the peace agreement void and take over the country.
Gunfires light up part of the night sky after the last US aircraft took off from the airport in Kabul early on August 31, 2021. (AFP via Getty Images)
“The last American occupier withdrew from (Kabul Airport) at 12 o’clock and our country gained its full independence, praise and gratitude be to Allah,” Mujahid wrote in a statement on Twitter.
In a separate message, he urged residents of Kabul to not be “worried” by city-wide gunfire and shouting.
“The sounds of gunfire in Kabul are shots of joy at the withdrawal of U.S. troops,” Mujahid asserted. “The voices of shouting are the product of joy.”
“Celebratory gunfire has been heard around Kabul once the final aircraft took off,” the U.K.’s Sky News reported on Monday, confirming the many reports of gunfire. A video published by Britain’s Daily Mail on August 30 purportedly shows Taliban terrorists firing off gunshots into the night sky just outside Hamid Karzai International Airport.
“Taliban fighters watched the last US planes disappear into the sky around midnight Monday and then fired their guns into the air, celebrating victory,” the Associated Press (AP) reported on August 30.
“The last five aircraft have left, it’s over!” a Taliban fighter named Hemad Sherzad stationed at Kabul’s airport told the AP of the planes carrying U.S. troops.
“I cannot express my happiness in words. … Our 20 years of sacrifice worked,” he said.
Taliban Fateh fighters, a “special forces” unit, patrol a street in Kabul on August 29, 2021, as suicide bomb threats hung over the final phase of the US military’s airlift operation from Kabul, with President Joe Biden warning another attack was highly likely before the evacuations end. (Photo by Aamir Qureshi/AFP via Getty Images)
No reports have confirmed that all the gunfire in the capital is the product of celebrations. Taliban terrorists have been engaging in violent attacks on suspected collaborators with the U.S. government, journalists, and other vulnerable populations since taking over the country on August 15. The Pentagon has confirmed that American citizens were among the victims. Mujahid and other Taliban mouthpieces insist that reports to this effect are false and any Taliban jihadists engaging in such violence are not legitimate members of the Taliban.
The U.S. government announced on the afternoon of August 30, U.S. time, that the last of its military personnel had left Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport. The Taliban terror group invaded Kabul on August 15, toppling the city’s U.S.-backed government and seizing full control of the country.
Hamid Karzai International Airport was the sight of intense chaos and bloodshed over the past two weeks as U.S forces and the militaries of several other nations worked to evacuate fellow citizens away from the Taliban’s new rule. Stampedes and Taliban gunfire first threatened the thousands of people thronged outside the airport, killing at least 20 of them. The evacuation site, Kabul’s only international airport, was further targeted on August 26 by suicide bombers, killing nearly 200 people. The Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K), claimed responsibility for the attack.