British shopkeeper was blast victim
A SHOPKEEPER from North London was named as one of the British victims of the Kabul airport attack on Thursday.
Musa Popal, 60, was pushing through the crowd trying to attract the attention of soldiers by waving his British passport when he was killed by the suicide bomber, it was reported last night.
His wife Saleema managed to crawl away from the carnage.
Their 14-year-old grandson, Hameed, who lived in Afghanistan and acted as an interpreter for his grandparents, is missing and feared dead.
Mr Popal, a British-Afghan dual national from Hendon, had been running the Madeena Supermarket near Brent Cross for the past 20 years.
His grief-stricken son Hidayat said: ‘He went to see his family and children. Three of my sisters and one of my brothers live there and some of them have got married recently so he went to celebrate.
‘We didn’t expect the situation to get that bad. It’s always been bad but we didn’t expect this.
Daughter Zohra described her father as a ‘very funny, very caring guy’, adding: ‘We can’t believe he has been killed – he was such a loving and kind-hearted man.’
Three British citizens and the daughter of a UK national were killed in the atrocity on Thursday. Mohamed Niazi, 29, an Uber driver from Aldershot, Hampshire, was among the victims.
His cousin, Ghulam Husain Niazi, from the same town, said: ‘I was told he was shot rather than killed in the explosion.’
Mr Niazi had flown to Afghanistan to rescue his wife and children after the country fell to Taliban control. His cousin said one of Mr Niazi’s children was in hospital.