Anti-Taliban protests in the eastern city of Jalalabad over the removal of the Afghan flag have now spread elsewhere in Afghanistan.
Rob McBride, reporting from Kabul, said there were reports of hundreds of protesters taking to the streets over the same issue in Khost province.
At least Four people were killed and more than a dozen injured after Taliban militants opened fire during protests against the group in the Afghan city of Jalalabad on Wednesday, two witnesses told media.
The witnesses said the deaths followed an attempt by local residents to install Afghanistan's national flag at a square in the city, some 150 km (90 miles) to the east of Kabul.
McBride said that “a fairly sizable part” of Jalalabad’s residents were resisting the replacement of Afghanistan’s national flag in the city by the Taliban banner.
“We have seen uploaded on social media, protests in the streets of hundreds if not thousands of people waving the national flag,” he said.
“We know that they have put the flag back up again in an important square in Jalalabad and that there have been clashes with the Taliban …”
Babrak Amirzada, a reporter for a local news agency, said he and a TV cameraman from another agency were beaten by the Taliban as they tried to cover the unrest, according to The Associated Press news agency.
Meanwhile, planes carrying hundreds of evacuees from Kabul have arrived in the United Kingdom and Germany as Western nations stepped up evacuation efforts and the Taliban promised women’s rights, media freedom and amnesty for government officials in Afghanistan.
The United States said its military flights had evacuated 3,200 people from Kabul so far, including 1,100 on Tuesday alone.
In Kabul, the Taliban sought to strike a conciliatory tone at its first press conference since its lightning seizure of the Afghan capital, promising to respect the rights of women “within the framework of Islam” and expressing a desire for peaceful relations with other countries.
Video footage shot by Pajhwok Afghan News, a local news agency, showed protesters in the city who were carrying the Afghan flag fleeing with the sound of gunshots in the background.A former police official told Reuters separately that four people had been killed and 13 injured in the protests, without elaborating further.
It was not possible to verify how the deaths occurred.
"There were some troublemakers who wanted to create issues for us," a Taliban militant present in Jalalabad at the time of the incident told Reuters. "These people are exploiting our relaxed policies."