Taliban were ‘catching and killing us’: Afghan intel officer who fled to Delhi on last flight from Kabul

An Afghan intelligence officer, who wished to be identified as only Asif, found himself in a small room comprising an attached bathroom and a marble slab with a sink – that he called a kitchen — in Lajpat Nagar for ₹500 a day. His compatriot assisted him in finding the place after Asif escaped Afghanistan on the last commercial flight from Kabul to Delhi.

With tears in his eyes and speaking in broken Hindi, the 41-year-old officer said, “I had to run, else the Taliban would have killed me. Everything ends here. I could not bring my family along.”

Asif fled the war-torn nation, which was completely captured by the Taliban on Sunday, leaving behind his ailing mother, wife and an 8-year-old son.