Taliban made raids in Indian consulates, took away vehicles

New Delhi: The Taliban have searched the closed Indian Consulates in Kandahar and Herat reportedly on Wednesday and took away some documents from the two missions, sources in the security set-up said.

The Taliban troops broke into the Consulate buildings and also took parked vehicles, as reported by IANS. .

India has four Indian consulates in Afghanistan, namely Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif and Jalalabad. All of them were closed following the Taliban taking over control of capital Kabul on August 15.

In the deteriorating law and order situation in the country, the Indian mission in Afghanistan arranged for the evacuation of Indian Embassy personnel by an Indian Air Force C-17 aircraft on Tuesday, whereby 120 Indian nationals including embassy personnel, ITBP personnel and civilians were brought to India from Kabul airport. Scores of civilians, working in different roles under the government-assigned contracts and projects were also evacuated to India, but as of Friday morning, more people remained to be flown back to India.

The evacuation of remaining Indian workers were also discussed in the meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) in Delhi, attended by prime minister Narendra Modi.

"Modi, in the two back-to-back meetings of the CCS on August 17 and 18, instructed officials for speedy evacuation of Indians who are still in the war-torn country, in the next few days and also to provide all possible help to Afghan brothers and sisters who are looking towards India for assistance," an official privy to these development had said.

Earlier, the Indian embassy in Kabul was functioning with truncated staff strength, but when the security situation changed for the worse, the government decided to call back all of them.