Edge's News: Afghanistan has fallen...as the Taliban take the capital Kabul

Taliban enters Afghan presidential palace after Ghani flees: Live

Hundreds of Afghans crowd Kabul airport after Taliban enters city and seizes control of presidential palace.



One of the Taliban’s top officials has said the real test of governing is set to begin, after the group entered the Afghan capital, Kabul, and took control of the presidential palace.


Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who heads the Taliban’s political bureau, said in a brief video statement on Sunday that the test would begin with meeting the expectations of Afghans and resolving their problems.


footage of Taliban leaders, surrounded by dozens of armed fighters, addressing the media from the country’s seat of power earlier on Sunday.


They entered the palace after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country amid the Taliban’s rapid advance, which saw the group capture 26 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals in less than two weeks.


Shafiq Hamdam, a former adviser to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, slammed Ghani’s decision to flee Afghanistan on Sunday amid the Taliban’s rapid advance on Kabul.


“It’s shameful. It’s embarrassing. People feel abandoned, people feel betrayed,” Hamdam told Al Jazeera from Washington, DC. Ghani justified his departure in a statement on Facebook, saying it aimed to prevent further bloodshed. “The Taliban have won with the judgement of their swords and guns,” he wrote.

Local television station 1TV reported that gunfire could be heard as night fell near the Kabul airport, where foreign diplomats, officials and other Afghans fled, seeking to leave the country amid the Taliban’s advance.


Massouma Tajik, a 22-year-old data analyst, was among hundreds of Afghans waiting anxiously to board an evacuation flight.


“I see people crying, they are not sure whether their flight will happen or not. Neither am I,” she told The Associated Press by phone, with panic in her voice.


Hundreds or more Afghans crowded in a part of the airport away from many of the evacuating Westerners. Some of them, including a man with a broken leg sitting on the ground, lined up for what was expected to be a last flight out by the country’s Ariana Airlines.

 

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