Thread by @WilliamYang120

The US has fired in the air at #Kabul’s airport to prevent hundreds of civilians from running onto the tarmac, according to an official and a witness. “The crowd was out of control. The firing was only done to defuse the chaos.” aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/16…

Major airlines including United Airlines, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic said they were not using #Afghanistan’s airspace following the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

A United spokeswoman said the change affects several of the airline’s US-to-India flights.

“The Taliban say they sent in 1,000 of their special forces units overnight. They are now in control of every checkpoint and have set up additional checkpoints.

I saw dozens of Taliban fighters with guns over their shoulders in police vehicles, in Afghan government vehicles patrolling the streets," said @CharlotteBellis from @AlJazeera_World.

A spokesman for the #Taliban said “the situation in Kabul is normal” and that its fighters “are busy providing security”. Zabihullah Mujahid also said the Taliban has deployed special units to different parts of Kabul and ...

... that the “general public is happy with the arrival of the Mujahideen and satisfied with the security”.

New Zealand’s government said it was sending a C-130 Hercules military transport plane to Afghanistan to help with the evacuation of 53 of its citizens and dozens of Afghanis and their immediate families who helped New Zealand troops when they were stationed there.

Prime Minister @jacindaardern said they had so far identified 37 Afghans who had helped, but the number of evacuees would be in the hundreds once dependents and others were included.

A spokesman for the US Department of State said the evacuation of US staff from its embassy in Kabul is now complete. A US official meanwhile told the Reuters news agency that most Western diplomats have now left Kabul, but some support staff remain in the city.

“We can confirm that the safe evacuation of all Embassy personnel is now complete. All Embassy personnel are located on the premises of Hamid Karzai International Airport, whose perimeter is secured by the US Military,” @StateDeptSpox wrote in a statement.

Matt Zeller, a US veteran of the Afghan war, said some 44,000 Afghans who helped Washington during the 20-year conflict are outside of Kabul and require urgent evacuation.

“This is a disaster of epic proportions,” he said, warning that Afghans who helped the US military may now be “hunted down and systematically murdered by the Taliban”.

“We then must open up a secure corridor so that we can begin evacuating our Afghan and wartime allies out of Afghanistan, not just from Kabul, but from every city where they reside,” he said.

“There are 44,000 people who are outside of Kabul and in other cities. The reports from them are horrific. There are public executions in Kandahar in the stadium.

Women have been told they cannot leave their homes in Herat and the Taliban are going door to door in Mazar-i-Sharif looking for anyone who worked with the US military. This is a report we are hearing in other cities, including in Kabul.”

Dramatic and very disturbing video from the airport in #Kabul, where a lot of Afghans were desperately trying to get on flights that were leaving the country.

https://twitter.com/NicolaCareem/status/1427122975971561475?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1427122975971561475%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aljazeera.com%2Fnews%2F2021%2F8%2F16%2Ftaliban-says-afghanistan-war-over-as-president-diplomats-flee

More from @AJEnglish: "Hundreds of Afghans invade the airport’s runways in the dark, pulling luggage and jostling for a place on one of the last commercial flights to leave before US forces take over air traffic control."

“This is our airport but we are seeing diplomats being evacuated while we wait in complete uncertainty,” Rakhshanda Jilali, a human rights activist who was trying to get to Pakistan, tells Reuters news agency in a message from the airport.

"Taliban officials say they had received no reports of any clashes from across the country a day after the armed group seized the capital, Kabul, and the US-backed government collapsed."

“The situation is peaceful, as per our reports,” one of the senior members of the Taliban tells Reuters news agency. He declines to be identified.

From @Guardian: The first Czech evacuation flight has taken off from Kabul’s international airport and landed in Prague.
Prime minister Andrej Babis said 46 people were on board Monday’s flight,AP reports.

More on #Afghanistan: Commercial flights from Kabul are cancelled after chaotic scenes at the airport with thousands looking for a way out after the Taliban re-took power in Afghanistan, according to @AJEnglish.

“There will be no commercial flights from Hamid Karzai Airport to prevent looting and plundering. Please do not rush to the airport,” the Kabul airport authority says in a message sent to reporters.

"Afghanistan Civil Aviation Authority (ACAA) says that Kabul airspace have been released to the military and it advises transit aircraft to reroute, according to a notice to airmen on its website."

ACAA says any transit through Kabul airspace will be uncontrolled and it has advised the surrounding flight information regions that control airspace.

From @Guardian: "Finland said it would close its embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul immediately and until further notice as a result of the security situation. “Diplomatic personnel is being evacuated from the country,” the Foreign ministry said in a statement."

UK's Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told @SkyNews that #Taliban is in control of #Afghanistan and British forces are not going to return to fight them. “I acknowledge that the Taliban are in control of the country," he said.

“I mean, you don’t have to be a political scientist to spot that’s where we’re at.”

Asked if Britain and NATO would return to Afghanistan, Wallace says: “That’s not on the cards … we’re not going to go back.”

“I think we all saw that and felt a real sense of sadness that first of all the forces that the British and the international community had invested in had melted away in some areas so quickly.”

“You don’t fix things overnight in global issues, you have to manage them... when that deal was done a few years ago, what happened was ultimately we undermined the community - the deal undermined the Afghan government and left it in a place that ultimately saw the end...

... the river flows fastest towards the end and that is what we saw yesterday and it’s what we’re seeing in our pictures today," Wallace added.

“My job as as defence secretary is to make sure that we protect not only the UK nationals, but those Afghans we have an obligation to, that is actually why we’re in the country.

For the last few weeks we’ve been in the country solely to process those people and to make sure we protect our officials doing that job and we’ll continue to do so.”

A Taliban leader tells Reuters news agency the Taliban fighters are regrouping from different provinces, and will wait until foreign forces had left before creating a new governance structure.

The leader, who requested anonymity, says Taliban fighters had been “ordered to allow Afghans to resume daily activities and do nothing to scare civilians”.

“Normal life will continue in a much better way, that’s all I can say for now,” he tells Reuters in a message.