Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
Hundreds of soldiers Afghanistan flew to Uzbekistan on 22 military planes and 24 helicopters over the weekend, after Kabul was captured Taliban.
The exodus included a plane colliding with an Uzbek fighter jet causing the two to crash.
The Uzbekistan Prosecutor’s Office said Monday that a total of 585 Afghan soldiers had arrived by plane and another 158 people crossed the border on foot as of Sunday (15/8).
This statement is in contrast to previous comments by the Uzbekistan Ministry of Defense which said an Afghan military plane was shot down by their airborne troops.
An Afghan jet plane crashed on Sunday night in the Uzbekistan region of Surxondaryo province, Sunday (15/8). The prosecutor’s office said that the pilots from the Afghan and Uzbekistan sides had escaped and survived.
But the official position of these hundreds of Afghan soldiers remains unclear. The prosecutor’s statement did not specify where the soldiers were being held after hundreds of soldiers were forced to land in the border town of Termez.
Meanwhile, another former Soviet Union country bordering Afghanistan, Tajikistan also said on Monday (16/8) that the neighboring country’s two military planes carrying more than 100 troops were allowed to land in the city of Bokhtar.
The Taliban had previously declared the war in Afghanistan was over after the group occupied the presidential palace in Kabul on Sunday (15/8).
“Today is a big day for the Afghan people and the mujahideen (Taliban). They are witnessing the fruits of their 20 years of efforts and sacrifices,” the spokesman for the Taliban’s Political Office, Mohammad Naeem, told Al-Jazeera, quoted by Reuters on Monday (16/16). /8).
It then said, “Thank you, God. The war in this country is over.”
Naeem later said that the Taliban would set up a new form of government in Afghanistan once they came to power. He said the Taliban wanted to build international relations and did not live in isolation.
“We have achieved what we are looking for, which is the freedom of our country, and the independence of our people,” Naeem said.
“We won’t allow anyone to use our land to target anyone, and we don’t want to hurt anyone else.”
The condition of the seizure of Kabul by the Taliban has made thousands of residents who are worried about the group’s power to carry out a massive exodus.
(Reuters/end)
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