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Baby handed to US soldiers in Kabul evacuation chaos still missing

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Reuters
(Last Updated On: November 6, 2021)

A two-month old baby handed over to US soldiers during the chaotic withdrawal process in Kabul in August is still missing.

In an exclusive interview with Reuters, the baby’s father Mirza Ali Ahmadi said it was a split second decision to hand baby Sohail to the soldier over a high fence near the gates of the airport as he feared the infant might get crushed in the chaos.

After handing over Sohail, it took the rest of the family more than a half hour to get to the other side of the airport fence.

Once they were inside, Sohail was nowhere to be found.

Mirza Ali, who said he worked as a security guard at the U.S embassy for 10 years, began desperately asking every official he encountered about his baby’s whereabouts, Reuters reported.

He said a military commander told him the airport was too dangerous for a baby and that he might have been taken to a special area for children. But when they got there it was empty.

“He walked with me all around the airport to search everywhere,” Mirza Ali said in an interview through a translator. He said he never got the commander’s name, as he didn’t speak English and was relying on Afghan colleagues from the embassy to help communicate.

Three days went by.

“I spoke to maybe more than 20 people,” he said. “Every officer – military or civilian – I came across I was asking about my baby.”

He said one of the civilian officials he spoke to told him Sohail might have been evacuated by himself. “They said ‘we don’t have resources to keep the baby here.'”

Mirza Ali, 35, Suraya, 32, and their four other children, were put on an evacuation flight to Qatar and then to Germany and eventually landed in the United States.

The family is now at Fort Bliss in Texas with other Afghan refugees waiting to be resettled somewhere in the United States.

Mirza Ali said he saw other families handing their babies over the Kabul airport fence to soldiers at the same time.

Mirza Ali said every person he comes across – aid workers, U.S. officials – he tells them about Sohail. “Everyone promises they will do their best, but they are just promises,” he said.

An Afghan refugee support group created a “Missing Baby” sign with Sohail’s picture on it and are circulating it among their networks in the hopes that someone will recognize him, Reuters reported.

A U.S. government official familiar with the situation said the case had been flagged for all the agencies involved, including the U.S. bases and overseas locations. The child was last seen being handed to a U.S. soldier during the chaos at the Kabul airport but “unfortunately no one can find the child,” the official said.

A State Department spokesperson said the government is working with international partners and the international community “to explore every avenue to locate the child, which includes an international amber alert that was issued through the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children.”

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ISIS-K leader reportedly living in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province

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(Last Updated On: March 28, 2024)

Sanaullah Ghaffari, also known as Shahab al-Muhajar, is reportedly the ISIS-Khorasan (Daesh) branch leader and is holed up in Pakistan, Reuters reports.

The 29-year-old took over as leader in 2020 and under his leadership the group has carried out extreme attacks as a means of recruiting, Reuters reported.

Reuters noted that little was known about Ghafari before the deadly 2021 ISIS attack on Kabul Airport, which killed 170 Afghan civilians and 13 American soldiers.

But after Friday’s deadly attack in a concert hall in Moscow, which left 139 people dead, Ghaffari’s group has come under intense scrutiny.

Reuters reports that Ghaffari is said to have been involved in several attacks in Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan.

Pakistani officials said months ago that Ghaffari had been killed in Kunar province in Afghanistan in June last year, but Reuters has reported that he did not die and instead fled to Pakistan and lives in the border province of Baluchistan.

Abdul Matin Qani, the spokesman of the Ministry of Interior of Afghanistan, says that Daesh has been suppressed in Afghanistan for more than two years and has lost its operational capacity.

The last attack carried out by Daesh in Afghanistan was the attack on the Kabul Bank office in Kandahar last week which left three dead and 12 wounded.

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IPL: Sunrisers thump MI in record breaking match

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(Last Updated On: March 28, 2024)

It was raining records at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad on Wednesday with the hosts Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) clinching a 31-run victory over Mumbai Indians (MI) in Match 8 of the Tata Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024.

Sunrisers’ batting rewrote the record books on a batting belter after the posted 277 for three.

SRH now have the highest team score in the history of the IPL – beating Royal Challengers Bangalore’s (RCB) 263 for five from the 2013 season.

In reply, MI made a spirited effort, and at one stage, were contenders to do the near impossible. In the slog overs, the enormity of the target proved a bit too much, and SRH clinched victory, but not without numerous nervous moments.

To put into perspective the carnage we witnessed – Heinrich Klaasen’s 23-ball half-century was the slowest fifty of the SRH innings.

Travis Head, playing his first match for SRH, raced to the milestone in 18 balls. Abhishek Sharma got there even faster – in 16 balls – to record the quickest fifty by an SRH batter in IPL history.

While Sunrisers notched up the highest total in the 16-year history of the IPL, just as incredibly, Mumbai Indians almost paid them back with the same coin, their batters coming out with a nothing-to-lose attitude.

The sixes kept rolling off the Mumbai bats too, helping them keep up with the asking rate for most of the chase, eventually however, they ran out of steam and finished on 246 for 5, the highest IPL total in a losing cause.

As ESPNcricinfo reported, never were more runs scored in a men’s T20 match (523). Never were most sixes hit in a men’s T20 (38). At the end of the close to four-hour six-fest, only two bowlers returned with an economy rate of under ten an over.

Thursday, March 28 : Match 9

Thursday’s match at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur sees Rajasthan Royals go up against Delhi Capitals.

Fans in Afghanistan can tune in to Ariana Television to watch the match live from 6.30pm. Alternatively the match can be screened live on arianatelevision.com

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Magnitude 5.2 quake jolts Afghanistan

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(Last Updated On: March 28, 2024)

An earthquake measuring a magnitude of 5.2 on the Richter Scale jolted Afghanistan on Thursday afternoon, the National Center for Seismology reported.

The quake was at a depth of 70km and epicentered in the mountainous north-eastern area of Ashkāsham.

The jolt was felt across the region including in Kabul, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan

There were no immediate reports of any casualties.

In October last year, over 2,000 people were killed when four 6.3-magnitude earthquakes struck in Herat province.

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