The cause remains unknown as US forces were in the final phase of pulling out of Kabul on Sunday.

 US Marines with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) process evacuees as they go through the Evacuation Control Center (ECC) during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan, August 28, 2021. (photo credit: SGT. VICTOR MANCILLA/US MARINE CORPS/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS)
US Marines with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) process evacuees as they go through the Evacuation Control Center (ECC) during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan, August 28, 2021. (photo credit: SGT. VICTOR MANCILLA/US MARINE CORPS/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS)

 

Another massive explosion was heard in Afghanistan’s Kabul on Sunday afternoon, a few days after a double suicide bombing attack killed dozens near the city’s airport.

Eyewitnesses at the scene say the explosion was a rocket hit at a house in a residential region close to the airport, but these reports are still unconfirmed. Television footage from the scene showed black smoke billowing into the sky above buildings. Thus far there have been no reports of casualties or injuries.

US forces were in the final phase of pulling out of Kabul on Sunday, ending two decades of costly involvement in Afghanistan, as the country’s new Taliban rulers prepared to take control of the airport.

Just over 1,000 civilians remained at the airport on Sunday to be flown out before the troops finally leave, a Western security official told Reuters.

US President Joe Biden has said he will stick by his deadline to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan by Tuesday. A US official told Reuters on Saturday that fewer than 4,000 troops remained at the airport.

US and allied forces have mounted a massive two-week effort to ferry foreign nationals and tens of thousands of vulnerable Afghans out of the country.

The airlift – one of the biggest such evacuation operations ever – marked the end of a 20-year Western mission in Afganistan that began when US-led forces ousted a Taliban government that had provided safe haven for the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

As reported by The Jerusalem Post