Afghanistan's national airline, Ariana, has effectively shut down, with the reported dismissal of all of its 13-hundred employees.
An official with the U-N office coordinating Afghan assistance, Hasan Ferdousi, says the Taleban-run Afghanistan Civil Aviation Authority's decision to let Ariana workers go is the result of the U-S led air strikes in that country.
Ariana had already been banned by the United Nations from operating international flights. That and other sanctions were imposed after Afghanistan's Taleban government refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, accused at the time of masterminding the 1998 bombings of two U-S embassies in East Africa.