150 Indians picked up by Taliban near Kabul airport

Around 150 Indian citizens were picked up by the Taliban from outside the gates of Kabul airport this morning, while they were waiting to be airlifted out of war-torn Afghanistan, NDTV reported citing a top Indian government source on Saturday.

The Indians picked up by the Taliban are in no immediate danger, the government source said, adding that they were taken in trucks to a nearby police station where they are being questioned. Back-channel talks are ongoing to secure their release, the source said.

Local news outlets in Kabul say Indians picked up by the Taliban are being held at a garage near the airport; the Taliban were reportedly checking travel papers and passports. It must be stressed that these are unconfirmed reports and NDTV has no independent verification of this claim at this time.

Earlier some Kabul news outlets claimed the Taliban had abducted over 150 people, including Indians. The Taliban rejected the claim; a tweet by Sharif Hassan, a Kabul-based reporter for The New York Times, quoted a spokesperson for the group.

The Taliban's 'picking up' of Indians comes hours after the IAF managed to airlift around 85 Indians from Kabul; the plane has landed safely in Tajikistan, sources said, adding that a second aircraft is on standby in India for further evacuations.

Sources this morning said the government is trying to bring as many Indians as possible into the airport at Kabul to keep them safe while it works out the evacuation logistics.

India has evacuated all embassy staff but an estimated 1,000 citizens remain in several cities in the war-torn country, and ascertaining their location and condition is proving to be a challenge, a Home Ministry official had said, since not all of them registered themselves with the embassy.

Among those are around 200 Sikhs and Hindus who have taken refuge at a gurudwara in Kabul. Late Wednesday a spokesperson for the Taliban - which seemed to be trying to project a more moderate image - released a video of the gurudwara head saying he had been assured of safety. Separately the political office of the Taliban had also sent messages to Delhi urging against the evacuation of diplomats and embassy staff, saying India had nothing to fear for their safety.

However, days before those 'outreach' messages sources said Taliban forces had entered at least two of India's consulates, "ransacked" offices and took away documents and parked vehicles. A senior official told NDTV "we expected this..."

Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar this week said the government is "very carefully" monitoring the situation in Kabul and Afghanistan, but that the immediate focus is on safely evacuating all citizens. Asked how India views and deals with the Taliban leadership, he said it is still "early days", not offering direct comment on whether or not India was in touch with the Taliban.

The Taliban took effective control of Afghanistan on Sunday, after President Ashraf Ghani fled and the group walked into capital Kabul with no opposition. This was after a staggeringly fast rout of major cities following two decades of war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.