Hundreds of Taliban fighters were heading on Sunday (22.08.2021) towards the Panshir Valley, one of the few sectors in Afghanistan where the authorities refuse to comply with their instructions, the group said.
“Hundreds of mujahideen from the Islamic Emirate are heading towards Panshir state to control it, after local state officials refused to hand it over peacefully,” the group wrote on its Arab Twitter account.
The Taliban began to take control of several cities in Afghanistan, following the start of the departure of U.S. troops from that country who raided that territory to wipe out al Qaeda cells after the September 11 attacks.
The Advance of the Taliban led to the displacement of thousands of Afghans for fear of being victims of Taliban reprisals. The previous Sunday, many entered the military airport in Kabul and tried to flee in the fuselage of a plane.
However, the Taliban on Sunday blamed the United States for the chaos at Kabul airport, where, a week after returning to power, tens of thousands of people are desperately seeking to escape Afghanistan, even risking their lives.
To “ensure safe evacuations and prevent a humanitarian crisis,” G7 leaders will hold a virtual meeting on Tuesday, british Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who currently chairs the group, announced.
Since entering Kabul on Sunday, the Taliban have left the airport in the hands of the United States, which they now accuse of having “failed to impose order at the airport.”
Thousands of frightened Afghans try to flee
Although this Islamist movement strives to promise a kinder version of its brutal regime from 1996 to 2001, thousands of terrified Afghans continue to try to flee through the airport.
Amid the chaos, seven people were killed in the crowd, britain’s defense ministry said Sunday, without detailing whether it was a single incident or several, or when it took place.
The British channel Sky News had broadcast images of three bodies covered with white tarpain outside the airport.
Earlier, images of a baby delivered to a soldier on a wall at the airport and horror scenes of people hanging from planes in full takeoff had gone viral.
A journalist who was evacuated on Sunday along with a group of press and university employees told AFP how desperate crowds surrounded his bus as it entered the area.
“They would show us their passports and shout, ‘Take us with you, please!'” the journalist explained. “A Taliban fighter in a truck fired into the air to disperse them,” he added.
Many families wait huddled among the wires separating the Taliban from U.S. troops, while routes to the airport remain congested by traffic.
