As per a report by NDTV, around 150 Indian citizens picked up by the Taliban for questioning this morning have been released and are now inside Kabul airport, they will be airlifted out of war-torn Afghanistan soon.
According to the report, Indian citizens waiting outside Kabul airport for evacuation flights were taken to a nearby police station for questioning and checking of travel documents, a top government source said, amid worrying reports from local media that they had abducted.
Earlier, several news outlets in Kabul alleged the Taliban had abducted over 150 people, including Indians. The Taliban rejected that claim; a tweet by Sharif Hassan, a Kabul-based reporter for The New York Times, quoted a spokesperson for the group.
The Taliban’s ‘picking up’ of Indian citizens occurs hours after an Air Force transport aircraft managed to evacuate around 85 Indians from Kabul; the plane has landed safely in Tajikistan, sources said, adding that a second aircraft is on standby in India.
Sources this morning said the government is trying to bring as many Indians as possible into the airport at Kabul to keep them safe while it works out the evacuation logistics.