Bangladesh has turned down a request from the United States to shelter citizens of Afghanistan who are at risk of Taliban reprisal after the hardline Islamist group took control of the war-ravaged country.
“The US is a friendly state to us. They made the request and we said ‘no’,” Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen said on Monday.
“We’ve said we’re suffering with the Rohingya, so please don’t put us in more trouble.”
The US made the request through the diplomatic channel between Washington and Dhaka, according to him.
Densely populated Bangladesh has sheltered more than 1.0 million Muslim Rohingya refugees who have fled decades of persecution and a brutal 2017 military crackdown in Myanmar, reads a reports on bdnews24.com with details from Reuters.
No Rohingya has been repatriated yet after the last exodus and Myanmar has now plunged into a deeper crisis after the military overthrew the elected government.
Afghanistan, a South Asian neighbour of Bangladesh, has been in turmoil over the Taliban insurgency for decades. After the US-led ouster of the Taliban 20 years ago, they entered capital Kabul on Sunday as the government backed by the West collapsed.
On Monday, thousands of civilians desperate to flee Afghanistan thronged Kabul airport, prompting the US military to suspend evacuations of the Americans from Afghanistan.
Crowds converged on the airport seeking to escape, including some clinging to a US military transport plane as it taxied on the runway, according to footage posted by a media company.
US troops fired in the air to deter people trying to force their way on to a military flight evacuating US diplomats and embassy staff, a US official said.
Five people were reported killed in chaos at the airport, although a witness said it was unclear if they had been shot or killed in a stampede. A US official told Reuters two gunmen had been killed by US forces there over the past 24 hours.
Britain said it will evacuate hundreds of British nationals and eligible Afghan nationals every day, and flights out of Afghanistan will continue for as long as it is safe.
Germany said it is working to get as many people as possible out of Afghanistan quickly and that NATO allies had misjudged the situation when they thought Afghan government forces could hold back the Taliban.
It said people who had worked with German military forces in the country, human rights activists and Afghan-German dual nationals will make up the bulk of some 10,000 people Germany wants to lift out of Afghanistan.
A first plane carrying Italian diplomats and their Afghan assistants arrived in Rome from Kabul on Monday as Prime Minister Mario Draghi vowed all Afghan citizens who assisted Italy's mission in the country would be protected.
US President Joe Biden's administration has been holding secret talks with more countries than previously known in a desperate attempt to secure deals to temporarily house at-risk Afghans who worked for the US government.
The talks underscore the administration's desire to protect US-affiliated Afghans from Taliban reprisals while safely completing the process of approving their US visas.
With the Taliban tightening their grip on Afghanistan at a shockingly swift pace, the United States on Thursday announced it would send 1,000 personnel to Qatar to accelerate the processing of applications for Special Immigrant Visas (SIV).
Afghans who served as interpreters for the US government and in other jobs are entitled to apply for the SIV programme.
