US anti-missile defences have intercepted as many as five rockets targeting Kabul airport as key American diplomats flew out of the Aghan capital in the final hours of the western evacuation under the threat of further Islamic State attacks.
Officials told Reuters that core US diplomats had on Monday joined the 122,000 foreign nationals and Afghans to be evacuated since mid-August, although it was not clear whether the acting ambassador, Ross Wilson, was among them.
The last few hundred US troops are due to pull out of the country by Joe Biden’s Tuesday deadline, drawing to a close their country’s longest military conflict, which began 20 years ago in retaliation for the 11 September 2001 attacks.
No casualties were reported from the rockets fired on Monday morning. IS, which opposes both the west and the hardline Islamist Taliban movement that swept back to power in Afghanistan a…
