On Tuesday, Taliban supporters paraded coffins draped with American and NATO flags in the eastern city of Khost, part of celebrations across the country following the withdrawal of the last U.S. troops.
Videos of the event were shared across social media, showing Taliban supporters holding up guns and Taliban flags as the coffins were marched through the crowd. Many people recorded the event on their phones.
Taliban supporters held a mock funeral with coffins covered in US, UK, French, and NATO flags as troops left the country in Afghanistan’s Khost pic.twitter.com/63mLJ5O1Rh
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According to The Daily Caller report:
Taliban supporters held mock funerals Tuesday in the city of Khost, holding up coffins draped with American, NATO, and several European countries’ flags as they celebrated the end of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.
Videos of the event were shared across social media, showing Taliban supporters holding up guns and Taliban flags as the coffins were marched through the crowd. Many people recorded the event on their phones.
“Aug. 31 is our formal Freedom Day. On this day, American occupying forces and NATO forces fled the country,” Taliban member Qari Saeed Khosti told Afghan media outlet Zhman TV during the funeral, according to Reuters.
The mock funeral, in which coffins covered in French and British flags were also carried along the street through a large crowd, marked the end of a 20-year war and a hasty and humiliating exit for Washington and its NATO allies.
Other images shared online on Tuesday showed Taliban members walking through Kabul airport in U.S.-supplied fatigues, some brandishing gleaming rifles and others trying out state-of-the-art night vision goggles or sizing up U.S. helicopters.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. military was not concerned by the images as the helicopters could not be flown. The departing U.S. troops destroyed more than 70 aircraft and dozens of armored vehicles. They also disabled air defenses that had thwarted an attempted Islamic State rocket attack on the eve of their departure.
Sources: The Gateway Pundit, Daily Caller, US News