“There was an explosion that happened inside the crowd — a lot of people got hurt,” he said. “I got a baby girl — she was 5 years old — she died right in my hands.”
He said some American troops were also outside the airport when the Kabul airport blasts occurred.
“It happened by a canal and the Americans were on the other side of the canal … they were checking people’s passports and stuff and those people that have visas, they were taking them by the airport. That’s why they were outside.”
The US service members, who were not killed or wounded, exchanged gunfire soon after that explosion.
The second blast occurred soon after the first. The bomb exploded outside the nearby Baron Hotel. This is the location where many Americans and British evacuees were told to meet before heading to the airport.
The Taliban said it was an act of terrorism but largely blamed it on US forces.
“As soon as the airport situation is figured out and the foreign forces leave, we will not have such attacks anymore. It is because of the presence of foreign forces that such attacks take place,” a Taliban official told Turkish TV.
