The US military will hand over its main Bagram Air Base to Afghan forces in about 20 days, an official said Tuesday, as Washington presses on with withdrawing the last of its troops from the country.
The vast base, built by the Soviets in the 1980s, is the biggest military facility used by US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, with tens of thousands of troops stationed there during the peak of America’s military involvement in the violence-wracked country.
“I can confirm we will hand over Bagram Air Base,” a US defence official told AFP without specifying when the transfer would take place.
An Afghan security official said the handover was expected in about 20 days and the defence ministry had set up special committees to manage it.
The base, the centre for nationwide command and air operations for the past two decades, also houses a prison that held thousands of Taliban and militant inmates over the years.
Washington has already handed over several military bases to Afghan forces before May 1, when it began accelerating the final withdrawal of troops.
Meanwhile, four people were killed and 28 others injured as a military vehicle-laden explosive device went off in Baghlan-e-Markazi district of the northern Baghlan province on Monday, provincial police spokesman Ahmad Jawed Basharat said Tuesday.
“The militants, after hijacking a military vehicle, filled it with explosive device and detonated in front of police headquarters in the restive Baghlan-e-Markazi district at 06:00 p.m. local time Monday, killing four persons including a civilian and injuring 28 others including 20 civilians,” Basharat told Xinhua.
Several shops and residential houses nearby were destroyed or badly damaged, the official said.
Taliban militants have been fighting for the past one month to overrun the troubled Baghlan-e-Markazi district and get closer to the provincial capital of Pul-e-Khumri city, 160 km north of Kabul.
