Sorrow, frustration for local Afghans as crisis continues
NEW YORK - As the death toll from Thursday's suicide bombing at Kabul Airport continues to rise and warnings from the White House that another attack is likely, members of the Afghan community in the New York City area are expressing their fears and frustration over the safety of their families and the future of the country.
"Nobody cares about us. We die, they kill us, children are dying, people are putting their children in the hands of the hands of people they don’t even know," said Meena Haideri, a Hicksville, Long Island mom.
RELATED: U.S. forces keep up Kabul airlift under threat of more attacks
Haideri and her family say they feel like they’re living a nightmare.
"We cannot eat because we don’t know if they ate or not, we cannot sleep, my father-in-law, my mother-in-law, they are both sick, they are aged, they need to be with somebody over there," said Haideri.
She says her elderly in-laws, the parents of her husband, Jawad, are trapped in Afghanistan with no way out. The family has tried to help Jawad’s parents escape the Taliban, but they keep hitting a wall.
"They don’t have visas, but we have applied through so many places, but we have no answer. We are both citizens, we are taxpayers, at least there should be some priorities for them, at least they are old people," said Haideri.
At a Mosque in Flushing, Queens FOX 5 NY met Barry Yousufzai.
"For the last three weeks I’ve been crying, I couldn’t go to sleep more than two hours during the nighttime," he said.
Yousufzai's brothers, sister, niece, nephews, uncles, and more - many of them engineers and doctors - are all in Afghanistan without special immigrant visas.
While he could not go into details, he told FOX 5 NY that his family there is planning an elaborate escape from Kabul tonight.
"I am expecting 17 members of my family to get out by tonight to go to Mexico," he said.
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