Kabul airport.Photo: Bashir Darwish/UPI/Shutterstock
On Monday,Reuters publishedan interview with former U.S. Embassy security guard Mirza Ali Ahmadi, who told the outlet the situation unfolded while he and his wife, Suraya, were with their five children outside the Kabul airport on Aug. 19 attempting to leave the country inthe wake of the Taliban takeover.
As Taliban fighters began pushing out potential evacuees, the scene grew tumultuous, according to Reuters.
The couple says they haven’t seen him since.
Mirza Ali, his wife and their other children were successfully evacuated and eventually made it to the United States, Reuters reported. The family is now at Fort Bliss in Texas as they await resettlement in the U.S., where they have no relatives.
Their son Sohail’s whereabouts remain unknown.
A spokesperson for the State Department tells PEOPLE that, due to privacy considerations, they generally do not comment on specific cases. But the official confirmed that the government was aware of the missing child and was attempting to locate him.
“We are committed to ensuring the protection of unaccompanied children,” the spokesperson says, adding, “We are working with our international partners and the international community to explore every avenue to locate the child, which includes an international amber alert that was issued through the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children.”
Speaking in general about such cases, the spokesperson says that as soon as a child “is identified as being without any trusted adult, we immediately begin working to reunite these children with their families and loved ones as quickly as possible.”
Unaccompanied children overseas are usually “referred to international organizations to assess their best interests and promote family reunification wherever possible,” the spokesperson says.
“Once an unaccompanied child arrives to the continental United States normal protocols for unaccompanied children apply,” the State Department spokesperson says.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement at the Department of Health and Human Services receives referrals for unaccompanied children and works to find any extended family or other appropriate sponsor to care for the child using established sponsor assessment processes.
According to the State Department, unaccompanied children not immediately unified with a guardian or caregiver “are placed in culturally and age-appropriate facilities. The Office of Refugee Resettlement has identified sites that have Dari and Pashto speakers and are culturally appropriate in addition to the standing resources we have for all unaccompanied minors.”
The 8-week-old girl, named Liya, was 16 days old when she was handed to a Marine from among a crowd. She is now safe with her family in the Phoenix area,CBS News reported in October.
source: people.com
