Taliban Didn't Want India To Evacuate Kabul Embassy Staff: Sources

There are still Indians in pockets in Kabul and other Afghanistan cities, including a group of around 200 Sikhs and Hindus who have taken refuge at a gurudwara

The Taliban did not want India to evacuate diplomats from its Kabul embassy, sources told NDTV today, indicating that the government had received messages from the group's Qatar office assuring them of the safety of Indian staff and security personnel. Movement of the Indian Ambassador and the Embassy staff from Kabul to India was a difficult and complicated exercise. Thank all those whose cooperation and facilitation made it possible. Two IAF transport aircraft landed at Hindan airbase in Ghaziabad now with the people evacuated from Kabul in a C-17 Globemaster that had landed in Gujarat's Jamnagar earlier today. IAF had sent additional C-130J Super Hercules aircraft to Jamnagar to bring passengers to Delhi These messages - sent from the office of Abbas Stanikzai, the chief of the Taliban's political unit - were routed via contacts in Kabul and Delhi, and were delivered before the embassy evacuations. Sources have told NDTV the messages, viewed as a sort of outreach effort by the Taliban, were relayed to the government said Indian diplomats and embassy personnel would be unharmed. India completed a "complicated" evacuation of embassy staff this week, with two Air Force C-17 transport planes flying into Kabul airport on Sunday, as the Taliban entered the Afghan capital.