Situation very tense: Macron urges utmost caution after Kabul blasts
French President Emmanuel Macron said “the situation has seriously deteriorated” near the Kabul airport after “several explosions happened in the last hours.”
Speaking in a news conference during a visit to Dublin, Ireland, Macron said “we are facing an extremely tense situation that makes us coordinate obviously with our American allies and call for the utmost caution in a context we don’t control.” He added France will seek to protect and evacuate French nationals, people from allied countries and Afghans “as long as the conditions will be met” at the airport.
Macron said he did not have more details about the circumstances of the explosions.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has said there were two suicide bombings outside Kabul airport that killed at least 13 people on Thursday and wounded another 15. U.S. officials meanwhile have said that American personnel were wounded in the blast, without elaborating.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden was meeting Thursday with a bipartisan group of governors from across the U.S. who have said they want to help resettle Afghans fleeing their now Taliban-ruled country. The White House meeting was taking place days before a Tuesday deadline for the U.S. to halt evacuations of Americans and vulnerable Afghans from the airport in Kabul, and to withdraw from the country entirely after 20 years of engagement. Some governors have said they want to help temporarily house or resettle Afghans in their communities because many aided the US war effort and now fear retribution from the Taliban for that assistance. Officials say the US must keep its word to help these Afghans.
But some conservatives have been sounding alarms about a new influx of refugees to the U.S., coming on top of large groups of Central American migrants and unaccompanied children trying to enter the U.S. through the border with Mexico.
There are also concerns that some refugees coming from Afghanistan might actually be terrorists, though the administration says all are being screened.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, is among those who say assisting Afghan refugees is paramount, even as he has criticized Biden’s handling of the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan.
“We made a commitment. We can’t let them down,” Hogan said this week on “CBS This Morning.” “What kind of message does it send to our allies across the world if our word is no good.” Separately Thursday, an explosion went off outside the airport in Kabul, the capital, where thousands of people have flocked as they try to flee Afghanistan. Officials offered no casualty count, but a witness said several people appeared to have been killed or wounded.