The four-year-old missing Afghan girl was seen walking out of a gated playground at her San Antonio, Texas, apartment complex in a recently emerged surveillance footage.
Lina Sardar Khil, 4, was last seen at the playground inside the gated Villas Del Cabo apartment complex on December 20, 2021. In the video footage released by San Antonio police, she looked both ways and twirled her hair before stepping out of sight, reports said.
According to her mother, Zarmeena, Lina was playing with her younger brother and other children. However, when she checked on Lina after five minutes the kid went missing.
She was last seen wearing a red dress, a black jacket, and black shoes, with her brown hair in a ponytail, according to police.
Following the missing complaint, police rushed to the apartment complex and went door-to-door to question all residents. They used dogs to explore the area near the playground and searched cars and dumpsters for the little child.
Though dogs were able to pick up a scent in the initial hours but quickly lost it and were never able to pick it up again.
San Antonio police officers and the FBI are now working on this case. Officers said that they have processed hundreds of tips about Lina's whereabouts but were unable to locate the girl who survived suicide bombing in Afghanistan.
Lina Sardar Khil
Jeremy Volz, lead detective on the case, confirmed it was the last visuals of Lina taken from a resident's security camera, adding that the force will not give up searching for the child.
However, detective German Fuentes, of the Special Victims Unit, said that circumstances of the young girl's disappearance 'were suspicious'.
"To be honest, they are suspicious circumstances based on the child's age, the fact that we have not found any evidence to indicate where she is at," he said in the video posted to the San Antonio Police Department's Facebook page. "There is a critical witness somewhere out there. That person that knows something needs to come forward and disclose what they know."
Lina's father Riaz was an Afghan soldier who assisted US forces and was given immigration rights before Lina was born.
The family fled from Afghanistan to the US in 2019 because due to several threats.
Lina and her family survived a suicide attack that murdered 13 US soldiers and hundreds of Afghans in 2021.
They were settled in San Antonio as it had an estimated 2,600 Afghan refugees. Riaz claimed he thought it would be a good idea for his family to relocate there.
"We arrived from Afghanistan expecting to live happily and safely here, but that's not what happened," Riaz, who now works as a truck driver, is reported to have said."My entire existence was destroyed."
Earlier, police offered £207,655 reward for information about the girl. The Islamic Center of San Antonio also announced a reward of $200,000. San Antonio Crime Stoppers has also offered $50,000 for help returning her to her family.
More than 150 volunteers from the The Eagles Flight Advocacy & Outreach non-profit organisation have joined members of the Afghan community in searching for the missing girl.
Workers clean communication equipment aboard INS Surat on January 11