At least two people have been killed after Taliban opened fire at a crowd celebrating independence day in Asadabad, witnesses told media.
In Jalalabad, Taliban fighters fired at people waving the Afghan flag during independence day celebrations, injuring a man and a teenage boy.
Charlotte Bellis, reporting from Kabul, said: “There were some isolated protests linked to the flag in Kabul as well, with people, including women, walking down the streets past Taliban fighters waving the old flag and saying: ‘Our flag is our identity.'”Meanwhile, evacuations are continuing from Kabul’s airport.
US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday he will keep soldiers in Afghanistan until every American is evacuated, even if that means going beyond his August 31 deadline.
The Taliban face an “existential” choice about how they are seen by the rest of the world after their sweeping military victory in Afghanistan, US President Joe Biden said.
“I think they’re going through sort of an existential crisis about do they want to be recognized by the international community as being a legitimate government,” Biden told ABC News.
The US president who defended the chaotic exit of the final US troops, foreigners and Afghan allies after the Taliban victory, said he was “not counting” on the Taliban to shift their priorities.
US President Joe Biden says in an interview that war is not the answer to growing fears for the human rights of women in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover.
“The idea that we’re able to deal with the rights of women around the world by military force is not rational,” Biden said in the ABC News interview, his first since the Taliban victory triggered a frantic final US withdrawal.
“There are a lot of places where women are being subjugated,” he said. “The way to deal with that is putting economic, diplomatic and international pressure on them to change their behaviour.”
The Taliban must decide whether it wants to be recognised by the international community, US President Joe Biden has said in an ABC interview, adding that he did not think the group had changed its fundamental beliefs.
According to Taliban and NATO officials, a total of 12 people have been killed in and around Kabul airport at the hands of US troops since the Taliban seized the city on Sunday, triggering a rush of fearful people trying to leave.
The deaths were caused either by gunshots or in stampedes, the Taliban official said, urging people still crowded at the airport gates to go home if they did not have the right paperwork to travel.
“We don’t want to hurt anyone at the airport,” said the Taliban official, who declined to be identified.