US says Kabul airport under fire after Taliban enters Afghan capital; President Ghani flees country

Kabul/New Delhi, August 15

The Taliban has taken control of Afghanistan's presidential palace, two senior Taliban commanders present in Kabul told Reuters on Sunday, hours after the insurgents entered the Afghan capital Kabul even as diplomats and locals hurried to leave the country.

Both President Ashraf Ghani and his deputy, Vice-President Amarullah Saleh, left Afghanistan earlier on Sunday after the Taliban announced it was on the outskirts of the city and was negotiating a peaceful surrender with the Western-backed government.  

There is no confirmation from the Afghan officials of the Taliban takeover.

The US Embassy said the capital's airport, where diplomats, officials, and other Afghans had fled, had come under fire.

"The security situation in Kabul is changing quickly including at the airport. There are reports of the airport taking fire; therefore we are instructing US citizens to shelter in place," a US Embassy security alert said.

Hundreds of Afghans, some of them government ministers and government employees and also other civilians including many women and children, crowded in the terminal desperately waiting for flights out.

"The airport is out of control... the (Afghan) government just sold us out," said an official at the scene who declined to be named for security reasons.

American diplomats were evacuated from their embassy by helicopter to the airport as local Afghan forces, trained for years and equipped by the United States and others for billions of dollars, melted away.

The hardline Islamists have swiftly taken over the country, taking large swathes of land under its control since May this year. 

Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced a three-member coordination committee to discuss the transfer of power with the Taliban after Ghani fled the country.

Ashraf Ghani: Departing Afghan president who failed to make peace with Taliban

The committee proposed by Karzai includes himself, Abdullah Abdullah and Gulbudin Hekmatyar.  

Ghani's destination was uncertain: a senior Interior Ministry official said he had left for Tajikistan, while a Foreign Ministry official said his location was unknown and the Taliban said it was checking his whereabouts.

Some local social media users branded him a "coward" for leaving them in chaos.

Taliban’s co-founder Mullah Baradar was tipped to be the Afghan President as Kabul went through a bloodless takeover shortly after Ghani and boarded a plane.

The Taliban ruled out any sharing of power and ordered its fighters to take over abandoned police posts in Kabul to prevent looting.

Two officials from the Taliban told Reuters there would be no transitional government and the Taliban said earlier it was waiting for the Western-backed government to surrender peacefully.

"Taliban fighters are to be on standby on all entrances of Kabul until a peaceful and satisfactory transfer of power is agreed," said spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

The government's acting interior minister, Abdul Sattar Mirzakawal, however, said power would be handed over to a transitional administration.

"There won't be an attack on the city, it is agreed that there will be a peaceful handover," he tweeted.

The Taliban's swift advances come as countries across the world emptied their embassies and hurried to fly out diplomats, sensitive papers, and equipment. 

Any hopes of a repeat of 2001 vanished after the northern citadels manned largely by non-Pashtuns also folded up to the Taliban. Its warlords, Abdul Rashid Dostum and Atta Mohammed Noor, fled the country claiming a conspiracy to trap and kill them.

Taliban fighters began moving towards Kabul following the overnight collapse of the two remaining cities of Mazar-e-Sharif and Jalalabad.

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"God will hold him (Ashraf Ghani) accountable" for leaving, Kabul's pointsman for peace talks, Abdullah Abdullah, said in a video message.

A Kabul hospital said more than 40 people wounded in clashes on the outskirts were being treated, but there did not appear to be major fighting.

Many of Kabul's streets were choked by cars and people either trying to rush home or reach the airport, residents said.

"Some people have left their keys in the car and have started walking to the airport," one resident told Reuters by phone. Another said: "People are all going home in fear of fighting".

Afghans had fled the provinces to enter Kabul in recent days, fearing a return to hardline Islamist rule.

Early on Sunday, refugees from Taliban-controlled provinces were seen unloading belongings from taxis and families stood outside embassy gates, while the city's downtown was packed with people stocking up on supplies.

Asked for comment, the president's office said it "cannot say anything about Ashraf Ghani's movement for security reasons". Up until Ghani and Saleh point when boarded the plane, the presidential palace had reiterated that it had the situation under control.

Sources here said the airport was still open and that civilian flights are still allowed to land. But India has on standby military transporters if the security situation worsens.

American diplomats were evacuated from their embassy by chopper after a lightning advance by the militants, who were poised to run Afghanistan again 20 years after they were toppled by US-led forces following the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Ali Ahmad Jalali, a US-based academic and former Afghan interior minister, could be named head of an interim administration in Kabul, three diplomatic sources said, though it was unclear whether the Taliban had agreed.

Known during their past rule for keeping girls out of school and their hardline practice of Islamic law, including punishments of amputation, stoning, and hanging, the Taliban appear to be trying to project a more modern face.

Another spokesman Suhail Shaheen said the group would protect the rights of women, as well as freedoms for media workers and diplomats.

"We assure the people, particularly in the city of Kabul, that their properties, their lives are safe," Shaheen told the BBC, saying a transfer of power was expected in days.

The ease of the Taliban's advance, despite billions of dollars spent by the United States and others to build up local Afghan government forces, has stunned the world.

Just last week, a US intelligence estimate said Kabul could hold out for at least three months. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to Ghani only hours earlier assuring him of Washington’s commitment towards a strong diplomatic relationship with the Afghan government.

Choppers at embassy

US officials said diplomats were being ferried by helicopters to the airport from its embassy in the fortified Wazir Akbar Khan district. More American troops were being sent to help in the evacuations after the Taliban's surge brought the Islamist group to Kabul in a matter of days.

"Core" US team members were working from the airport, a US official said, while a NATO official said several European Union staff had moved to a safer location in the capital.

Earlier on Sunday, the insurgents captured the eastern city of Jalalabad without a fight, giving them control of one of the main highways into landlocked Afghanistan. They also took over the nearby Torkham border post with Pakistan, leaving Kabul airport the only way out of Afghanistan still in government hands.

"The governor has surrendered to the Taliban," a Jalalabad-based Afghan official told Reuters. "Allowing passage to the Taliban was the only way to save civilian lives." A video clip distributed by the Taliban showed people cheering and shouting "Allahu Akbar"—God is greatest— as a convoy of pickup trucks entered Jalalabad with fighters brandishing machine guns and the white Taliban flag.

After US-led forces withdrew the bulk of their remaining troops in the last month, the Taliban campaign accelerated as the Afghan military's defences appeared to collapse.

President Joe Biden on Saturday authorised the deployment of 5,000 US troops to help evacuate citizens and ensure an "orderly and safe" drawdown of military personnel.

A US defence official said that included 1,000 newly approved troops from the 82nd Airborne Division.

The Taliban said its rapid gains showed it was popularly accepted by the Afghan people.

Biden said his administration had told Taliban officials in talks in Qatar that any action that put US personnel at risk "will be met with a swift and strong US military response". He has faced rising domestic criticism after sticking to a plan, initiated by his Republican predecessor Donald Trump, to end the US military mission in Afghanistan by August 31.

"An endless American presence in the middle of another country's civil conflict was not acceptable to me," Biden said on Saturday.

— Agencies/TNS

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