“They shouted, ‘save my baby’ and threw the babies at us, some of the babies fell on the barbed wire,” said one Parachute Regiment officer
By Taz Ali
August 19, 2021
Desperate Afghan mothers threw their babies over barbed wire as they begged British soldiers to take them to safety away from the Taliban.
The heartbreaking scenes unfolded at the airport in Kabul where thousands of people under threat by insurgents are being airlifted to by the US, Britain and other countries.
“The mothers were desperate, they were getting beaten by the Taliban. They shouted, ‘save my baby’ and threw the babies at us, some of the babies fell on the barbed wire. It was awful what happened. By the end of the night there wasn’t one man among us who was not crying,” an officer from the Parachute Regiment told Kim Sengupta, the Independent‘s foreign correspondent in Kabul.
Crowds of people seeking refuge in the UK gathered outside the Baron Hotel close to the airport, with numbers growing each day as more Afghans attempt to escape the Taliban.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said another company of soldiers had been flown into Afghanistan to help with public order. But amid reports that women had been handing their babies to British troops to take them to safety, he told Sky News: “Obviously we can’t just take a minor on their own.”
He said if children were being taken by British troops it was because their families were also being removed from the country.
Taliban fighters armed with Kalashnikov AK-47s patrol the streets nearby, stopping Afghans walking along the roads to check their papers and turning some of them away,
At a Taliban checkpoint, vengeful fighters are beating up Afghans, with some tearing up their passports and other travel documents. “I was with my family, one of the Taliban got angry at something my wife said and started beating her with a stick,” Amir Akhbar Mohammed told Sengupta , whose reports also appear in i
“I got these injuries trying to protect her. The man was actually trying to reach around me to hit her. They seem to like hitting women.”
Shahanaz Nahimi arrived at the Baron Hotel with her 23-year-old brother Shafitullah. They had travelled from Baghlan where their home was raided by insurgents who killed, Ms Nahimi said, two brothers, Basitullah, 15 and Akhitullah, 28.
They did not appear to have visas or other documents allowing resettlement abroad. Ms Nahimi said: “I thought if we got here there would be a chance that one of the countries would take us. Our family has suffered, we can show proof that the Taliban had been targeting us and they will try to hurt us again.”
Published at inews.co.uk
