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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
World
Ben Doherty (now); Mattha Busby, Alex Mistlin, Ben Quinn and Helen Sullivan (earlier)

Reports children killed in US attack on suicide bombers – as it happened

Smoke rises after an explosion in Kabul on Sunday.
Smoke rises after an explosion in Kabul on Sunday. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

We are about to close this live blog. Our rolling coverage continues here.

A summary of recent developments as Afghanistan enters the penultimate day of the 20-year presence of foreign troops in the country.

  • A US drone strike on a vehicle in a Kabul neighbourhood has killed nine people, including, allegedly, a number of children, according to local reports. This figure has not been confirmed. US Central Command has said it is assessing the possibility of civilian casualties. It reported the vehicle was carrying explosives and suicide bombers who were set to target Kabul airport imminently.
  • Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, said the US would continue working with the Taliban to ensure safe passage for those wishing to leave Afghanistan beyond the 31 August deadline. Nearly 100 countries have issued a joint statement saying foreign nationals, Afghans who worked alongside coalition forces, and vulnerable people, would be allowed to leave the country.
  • Coalition countries say the Taliban has committed to allowing safe passage for those seeking to leave Afghanistan. “We have received assurances from the Taliban that all foreign nationals and any Afghan citizen with travel authorization from our countries will be allowed to proceed in a safe and orderly manner to points of departure and travel outside the country,” a joint statement, from nearly 100 countries, said.
  • The Taliban has confirmed its supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, who has never made a public appearance and whose whereabouts have largely remained unknown, is in Afghanistan.
  • US president Joe Biden travelled to Dover Airbase for the return to home soil of the bodies of 11 of the 13 American service members killed in the Kabul attack last week which also killed 169 Afghans.
  • France and Britain will submit a resolution to an emergency United Nations meeting due Monday on Afghanistan proposing a safe zone in Kabul to protect people trying to leave the country, French president Emmanuel Macron said.

Updated

Some more on that reported ‘commitment’ to safe passage for those seeking to flee Afghanistan. Secretary of state Antony Blinken says the US intends to “hold” the Taliban to that commitment: the question remains, with US troops soon to depart the country, how?

The Taliban has not yet announced a new government after taking control of Afghanistan but the hardline Islamist group confirmed Sunday that its supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada is in Afghanistan and could soon appear in public for the first time, AFP reports.

The inner workings and leadership of the group have long been shrouded in secrecy - even during their rule from 1996 to 2001 - but here is a rundown of what is known:

Hibatullah Akhundzada, the supreme leader:

Hibatullah Akhundzada was appointed leader of the Taliban in a swift power transition after a US drone strike killed his predecessor, Mullah Mansour Akhtar, in 2016.

Before ascending the movement’s ranks, Akhundzada was a low-profile religious figure. He is widely believed to have been selected to serve more as a spiritual figurehead than a military commander.

After being appointed leader, Akhundzada secured a pledge of loyalty from Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, who showered the cleric with praise - calling him “the emir of the faithful”.

This helped seal his jihadi credentials with the group’s long-time allies.

The leader of the Afghanistan Taliban Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada
The leader of the Afghanistan Taliban Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada Photograph: Afghan Islamic Press/AP

Akhundzada was tasked with the enormous challenge of unifying a militant movement that briefly fractured during the bitter power struggle after Akhtar’s assassination, and the revelation that the leadership had hidden the death of Taliban founder Mullah Omar for years.

Until now, his public profile has largely been limited to the release of messages during Islamic holidays.

“He is present in Kandahar. He has been living there from the very beginning,” Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said on Sunday.

He is expected to soon appear in public.

Mullah Baradar, the co-founder:

Abdul Ghani Baradar was raised in Kandahar - the birthplace of the Taliban movement.

Like most Afghans, Baradar’s life was forever altered by the Soviet invasion of the country in the late 1970s, transforming him into an insurgent.

He was believed to have fought side-by-side with the one-eyed cleric Mullah Omar.

The two would go on to found the Taliban movement in the early 1990s during the chaos and corruption of the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal.

After the Taliban regime was toppled in 2001 by US-led forces, Baradar is believed to have been among a small group of insurgents who approached interim leader Hamid Karzai with a potential deal that would have seen the militants recognise the new administration.

Arrested in Pakistan in 2010, Baradar was kept in custody until pressure from the United States saw him freed in 2018 and relocated to Qatar.

This is where he was appointed head of the Taliban’s political office and oversaw the signing of the troop withdrawal agreement with the United States.

A vendor in Kabul holds a Taliban flag next to a poster of Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar
A vendor in Kabul holds a Taliban flag next to a poster of Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar Photograph: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images

Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Haqqani Network:

The son of a famed commander from the anti-Soviet jihad, Sirajuddin Haqqani doubles as the deputy leader of the Taliban and head of the powerful Haqqani network.

The Haqqani network is a US-designated terror group long viewed as one of the most dangerous militant factions in Afghanistan.

The group is infamous for its use of suicide bombers and is believed to have orchestrated some of the most high-profile attacks in Kabul over the years.

The network is also accused of assassinating top Afghan officials and holding kidnapped Western citizens for ransom - including US soldier Bowe Bergdahl, released in 2014.

Known for their independence, fighting acumen, and savvy business dealings, the Haqqanis operate from the rugged mountains of eastern Afghanistan, while holding considerable sway over the Taliban’s leadership council.

Mullah Yaqoob, the scion:

The son of Taliban co-founder Mullah Omar, Mullah Yaqoob heads the group’s powerful military commission, which oversaw the vast network of field commanders charged with executing the insurgency.

Yaqoob’s father enjoyed cult-like status as the Taliban leader, and that potent lineage makes him a unifying figure in the movement.

Speculation remains, however, about Yaqoob’s exact role - with some analysts arguing that his appointment in 2020 was merely cosmetic.

Hello, this is Ben Doherty in Sydney, taking over our continuing rolling coverage of Afghanistan.

The US and nearly 100 other nations have issued a joint statement saying they have received a collective assurance from the Taliban that foreign nationals and Afghans who worked alongside coalition nations will be allowed to leave the country.

This is the text in full:

We are all committed to ensuring that our citizens, nationals and residents, employees, Afghans who have worked with us and those who are at risk can continue to travel freely to destinations outside Afghanistan.

We have received assurances from the Taliban that all foreign nationals and any Afghan citizen with travel authorisation from our countries will be allowed to proceed in a safe and orderly manner to points of departure and travel outside the country.

We will continue issuing travel documentation to designated Afghans, and we have the clear expectation of and commitment from the Taliban that they can travel to our respective countries. We note the public statements of the Taliban confirming this understanding.

Fox News national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin tweets that the car targeted was parked when the drone struck.

There are further unconfirmed reports that an Afghan army officer and a former US interpreter may be among the dead.

Updated

The US is facing serious questions, as the reported civilian death toll grows. It has said that the strike struck a vehicle, but that secondary blasts indicated “a substantial amount of explosive material”.

It comes after US president Joe Biden’s statement yesterday in which he said: “I said we would go after the group responsible for the attack on our troops and innocent civilians in Kabul, and we have.”

Updated

A destroyed vehicle is seen inside a house after a US drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, 29 August.
A destroyed vehicle is seen inside a house after a US drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, 29 August. Photograph: Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi/AP
The broken door of a house is seen after the US drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, 29 August.
The broken door of a house is seen after the US drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, 29 August. Photograph: Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi/AP

The Taliban have condemned the US drone strike against suspected suicide bombers in Kabul, saying it had violated Afghanistan’s sovereignty.

Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, said civilians had suffered casualties in the US strike and a house had been hit. “We are investigating the reason for the airstrike and the exact number of casualties,” he said, according to the New York Times.

Bilal Kareemi, another Taliban spokesman, told CNN it was “not right to conduct operations on others’ soil” and that the US should have informed the Taliban. “Whenever the US conducts such operations, we condemn them,” he said.

Updated

Reported civilian death toll of US drone strike reaches nine, all from same family - CNN

Nine members of one family were killed in the US drone strike targeting a vehicle in a residential neighbourhood of Kabul, according to a relative of those killed reported by CNN. The overall civilian death toll remains unclear.

Earlier we reported that at least three children were killed in the Hellfire missile strike which struck a vehicle carrying Islamic State suicide bombers in Kabul’s densely populated Khaje Bughra neighbourhood, according to an Afghan official quoted by the AP.

The US has said it was “assessing the possibilities” of having killed or injured civilians in the airstrike. Military officials said the vehicle was carrying explosives and that the initial strike set off secondary explosions which damaged a building.

Those killed included six children, the youngest being a two-year-old girl, the brother of one of the dead told a local journalist working with CNN.

He cried as he told the journalist that they were “an ordinary family … we are not Isis or Daesh and this was a family home – where my brothers lived with their families.”

A man named Ahad, who said he was a neighbour of the family, told CNN:

All the neighbours tried to help and brought water to put out the fire and I saw that there were five or six people dead … the father of the family and another young boy and there were two children. They were dead. They were in pieces. There were [also] two wounded.

A local journalist who visited the scene soon after the airstrike told CNN that, “whatever material was in the car, I don’t know. The car was in a very bad state, just a skeleton of the car was left.”

The journalist was told by family members of the deceased that there were two cars parked at the home, and that one of the cars contained one of the fathers and his three children getting ready to go to a family event.

It comes after at least 40 civilians attending a wedding party in September 2019 were killed by explosions and gunfire during a raid by US-backed Afghan government forces on a nearby Islamist militant hideout, according to officials, just days after a US drone strike aimed at militants hiding among farmers killed 32 pine nut harvesters.

Updated

Kosovo’s government has said that a group of 111 Afghan evacuees it will host temporarily have arrived in the country.

The Afghans, who had worked with Nato, and their families came from the Ramstein military base in Germany. They will be housed near the US military Camp Bondsteel, 40km south of the capital Pristina, AP reports.

Kosovo has said it may temporarily shelter up to 2,000 Afghans while they process documentation on their final destination to the US. Kosovo’s senior leaders and several western ambassadors were present to welcome the evacuees.

“Many years ago we were victims of genocide ourselves,” said president Vjosa Osmani. “We will be alongside all of the Nato partners until all of this is completed successfully.”

Prime minister Albin Kurti added: “We will do everything to make sure they will be safe, secure here and, at the same time, get some rest.”

Updated

The three candidates to succeed chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany’s election next month – Armin Laschet for Merkel’s centre-right Union bloc, Olaf Scholz for the centre-left Social Democrats and Annalena Baerbock for the environmentalist Greens – touched on events in Afghanistan in their debate tonight.

It comes after the German government – like others – scrambled to evacuate its nationals and endangered Afghans from Kabul following the capital’s fall to the Taliban after previously having withdrawn its military, AP reports.

Laschet described what happened as “a disaster for the west, also a disaster for the German government” and used it to renew a call for a “national security council” to improve decision-making in Germany. Baerbock accused the government of “ducking away” from decisions on getting endangered Afghans out.

Scholz pointed to government efforts to enable those who couldn’t be evacuated in recent days to leave. Laschet challenged Scholz to rule out a coalition with the leftwing opposition Left party, a possibility the Union has played up as its own ratings weaken.

Scholz declined to do so explicitly, but said the Left party’s refusal to support the military evacuation mission from Kabul “greatly saddened” him and insisted that any government he leads must have “a clear commitment to Nato”.

Candidates for chancellor from left, Armin Laschet, Annalena Baerbock and Olaf Scholz stand before the broadcast in the TV studio in Berlin, 29 August.
Candidates for chancellor from left, Armin Laschet, Annalena Baerbock and Olaf Scholz stand before the broadcast in the TV studio in Berlin, 29 August. Photograph: Michael Kappeler/AP

Updated

President Emmanuel Macron has said discussions between France and the Taliban over evacuations from Afghanistan do not indicate recognition of the country’s new rulers, saying they needed to fulfil conditions on rights and rejecting terror.

AFP reports that France and other western states have acknowledged they are talking to the Taliban, following the group’s takeover of Kabul this month, over how to extract foreign citizens and Afghans in potential danger.

Macron told TF1 television during a visit to Iraq:

We have operations to carry out in Afghanistan - the evacuations. The Taliban are the ones in control … we have to have these discussions from a practical point of view. This does not mean there will be recognition.

We have set conditions … if they make pacts with terrorist movements present in Afghanistan and the region then that will clearly be unacceptable for us all.”

He added that the Taliban needed to respect humanitarian law by allowing those who qualify for asylum to leave, and also to take a “very clear line” against all terror movements. He said the third area was human rights and “in particularly respect for the dignity of Afghan women”.

Macron said he could not promise the talks would result in more people being evacuated, while singling out the help of Qatar, which has good relations with the Taliban as well as Paris.

“The objective is to obtain the humanitarian evacuations of all women and men who are at risk … will we get there? I can’t guarantee that,” he said.

Macron had earlier announced that France was jointly putting forward a proposal at the UN security council for a safe zone to help those in need to leave. He added that the idea would help put pressure on the Taliban.

It would send a message to the Taliban that “if you want to move forwards and have a country open to the rest of the region and the world, you have to respect humanitarian rules and let all those men and women who want to be protected have protection”.

Macron has been under fire in France over his policy towards Afghan refugees, with the left saying the country has been ungenerous while the right has expressed fears over security risks, AFP reports.

French president Emmanuel Macron (R) meets with female members of the Kurdish Peshmerga in Arbil, the capital of Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdish region, on 29 August.
French president Emmanuel Macron meets with female members of the Kurdish Peshmerga in Arbil, the capital of Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdish region, on 29 August. Photograph: Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

Joe Biden has refused to take questions on events in Afghanistan, walking away from a podium at the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Washington DC when a reporter began to broach developing issues at Kabul airport.

Updated

US drone strike against suicide bombers reportedly kills at least three children

At least three children were killed in a US drone strike that American officials said struck a vehicle carrying Islamic State suicide bombers, the Associated Press quotes an Afghan official saying on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.

It comes after the US said it was “assessing the possibilities” of having killed or injured civilians in the airstrike. Military officials said the vehicle was carrying explosives and that the initial strike set off secondary explosions.

The American officials said the bombers planned to attack Kabul’s international airport, where a massive airlift is still underway ahead of a Tuesday deadline for the withdrawal of US forces.

The US drone strike blew up a vehicle carrying “multiple suicide bombers” from Afghanistan’s Islamic State affiliate before they could attack the ongoing military evacuation at Kabul’s international airport, American officials said.

At around the same time as the drone strike, Afghan police said a rocket hit a neighbourhood near the airport, killing a child. The Taliban described the drone strike and the rocket attack as separate incidents, but AP reporters in the Afghan capital heard only one large blast.

Two American military officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations, called the airstrike successful and said the vehicle carried multiple bombers.

Updated

From our illustrator Ben Jennings.

20 years in Afghanistan.
20 years in Afghanistan. Illustration: Ben Jennings/The Guardian

Updated

Here’s the full story on Boris Johnson and other world leaders receiving assurances from the Taliban that foreign nationals and those with authorisation to flee Afghanistan will be free to leave as tensions and bloodshed escalate on the streets of Kabul.

Here’s the full story from Reuters on US president Joe Biden shutting his eyes and tilting his head back as the flag-draped cases carrying the remains of 11 American service members killed in a suicide bomb attack at Kabul airport which also killed 169 Afghans emerged from a military plane at a base in Delaware earlier today.

Biden, his wife, Jill, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and senior military officials stood sombrely as US troops carried the cases down the ramp of an Air Force C-17 aircraft at Dover Air Force Base. Crying could be heard and a woman collapsed as the remains were loaded into vans for transport to a facility where they will undergo identification and autopsies.

The 11 service members were among 13 US troops killed in an Islamic State suicide attack on Thursday outside Kabul’s airport, where the United States has been staging a massive airlift of Americans and Afghans during the past two weeks. Scores of Afghans were also killed in the attack.

Earlier today, Biden and his wife met with grieving family members of some of the fallen American service members. The remains of two other US service members killed in the attack are being brought home privately at the request of their families.

Biden, a Democrat, has been criticised by Republicans, who have accused his administration of bungling the 31 August withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan after a two-decade war in the South Asian nation.

President Joe Biden watches as a carry team moves a transfer case containing the remains of Army Staff Sgt. Ryan C. Knauss, 23, of Corryton, Tenn. on Sunday.
President Joe Biden watches as a carry team moves a transfer case containing the remains of Army Staff Sgt. Ryan C. Knauss, 23, of Corryton, Tenn. on Sunday. Photograph: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Updated

The TTP has claimed responsibility for the attack in a Telegram message shared with a Reuters journalist, and denied having suffered any losses in the retaliatory fire.

Militant fire from across the border in Afghanistan has killed two Pakistani soldiers, the army said, in the first such attack since the Taliban took over Kabul ten days ago.

Reuters reports that the army said it retaliated and killed two or three attackers, a claim not verifiable because the tribal districts along the Afghan border are off limits to journalists and human rights organisations.

The incident in Pakistan’s Bajaur district is the first of its kind reported since the Taliban took over Kabul on 15 August. Bajaur is one of several lawless tribal regions along the Afghan border which have long sheltered militants, including an Islamist militant umbrella organisation called Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

The TTP, which renewed an allegiance to the Afghan Taliban after the fall of Kabul, has recently stepped up its campaign against the Pakistani army.

The army did not say which group it thought was responsible for today’s attack. “As per intelligence reports, due to fire of Pakistan army troops, 2-3 terrorists got killed and 3-4 terrorists got injured,” the military said.

The statement condemned the “the use of Afghan soil by terrorists for activities against Pakistan and expects that existing and future set-up in Afghanistan will not allow such activities against Pakistan.”

Islamabad accuses the TTP of having used Afghanistan as a base from where to carry a suicide attack in northern Pakistan in July that killed nine Chinese workers and four Pakistanis.

The Afghan Taliban’s spokesman Zabihullah Muhaid said in his maiden news conference that the Islamist militants would not allow any group to use Afghan soil against anyone, Reuters reports.

Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada is in Afghanistan, says spokesman

The Taliban’s supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, who has never made a public appearance and whose whereabouts have largely remained unknown, is in Afghanistan, the group has confirmed.

“He is present in Kandahar. He has been living there from the very beginning,” said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

“He will soon appear in public,” added deputy spokesman Bilal Karimi. The so-called commander of the faithful, Akhundzada has shepherded the Taliban as its chief since 2016 when snatched from relative obscurity to oversee a movement in crisis.

AFP reports that little is still known about Akhundzada’s day-to-day role, with his public profile largely limited to the release of annual messages during Islamic holidays. He has yet to issue any kind of statement since the Taliban swept to power and took control of Afghanistan in mid-August.

The Taliban have a long history of keeping their top leader in the shadows, AFP reported. The group’s enigmatic founder Mullah Mohammad Omar was notorious for his hermit ways and rarely travelled to Kabul when the group was in power in the 1990s.

Instead, Omar stayed largely out of sight in his compound in Kandahar, reluctant even to meet visiting delegations.

In this undated photo from an unknown location, released in 2016, the leader of the Afghanistan Taliban Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada poses for a portrait.
In this undated photo from an unknown location, released in 2016, the leader of the Afghanistan Taliban Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada poses for a portrait. Photograph: Afghan Islamic Press/AP

The Labour party, meanwhile, has challenged the UK government’s estimate of how many Afghans who could be eligible for resettlement in the country are left in the country as the party’s own MPs are already tracking 5,000 cases.

PA Media reports that defence secretary Ben Wallace previously said he believed between 800 and 1,100 Afghans eligible under the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (Arap) would be left behind, while around 100-150 UK nationals would remain in Afghanistan, although he said some of those were staying willingly.

But in a letter to foreign secretary Dominic Raab, his Labour counterpart Lisa Nandy said 5,000 potential cases had been identified by Labour MPs alone and warned the government was working with a “serious underestimate” and should plan for “significantly larger” numbers.

My office is currently tracking cases related to 5,000 people from Labour MPs alone, including British nationals, high-profile public figures, people with serious disabilities and children separated from their families - which may give a sense of the complexity of evacuation.

Nandy said that in the finals days of the evacuation “the only realistic route to assist people was by sending WhatsApp messages to the Defence Secretary or the minister for Afghanistan” as phone numbers and email addresses given to MPs either did not work or were unanswered.

The Observer has reported thousands of emails from MPs and charities highlighting potentially eligible cases went unread by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) amid the chaos of the evacuation.

Updated

It comes as the UK government said it has received assurances from the Taliban that anybody wishing to leave Afghanistan after 31 August would be allowed to do so.

PA reports on fears that potentially thousands of Afghans who may have been eligible for resettlement schemes, who could not make it to Kabul airport for evacuation or were not processed in time, may not be able to leave following the departure of US military personnel.

UK prime minister Boris Johnson said today that if the Taliban regime wanted diplomatic recognition and aid funding, they would have to ensure “safe passage” for those who want to leave.

In a joint statement with the US and more than 90 other countries, it was confirmed that the Taliban had said anyone who wished to leave the country could do so.

We have received assurances from the Taliban that all foreign nationals and any Afghan citizen with travel authorisation from our countries will be allowed to proceed in a safe and orderly manner to points of departure and travel outside the country.”

British ambassador to Afghanistan Laurie Bristow, who had remained in the country and relocated the embassy to Kabul airport to process as many evacuees as possible, arrived back in the UK earlier today. He said:

We’ve had to leave Afghanistan for now and the embassy will operate from Qatar for the time being. We will continue to stand by the people of Afghanistan, working on humanitarian, diplomatic and security work, and above all bringing to the UK Afghans and British nationals who still need our support, and we will be putting pressure on the Taliban to allow safe passage for those people.

We will reopen the embassy as soon as we can. We will do everything we can to protect the gains of the last 20 years and above all to help the Afghan people achieve the security and the peace that they deserve.

Vice Admiral Ben Key, who commanded the operation, acknowledged that not all have been evacuated.

Whilst we recognise and I pay testament to the achievement of everything that has been achieved by coalition forces, but particularly the British contingent, over the last two weeks, in the end we know that there are some really sad stories of people who have desperately tried to leave that we have, no matter how hard our efforts, we have been unsuccessful in evacuating.

There has been a phenomenal effort achieved in the last two weeks. And I think we always knew that somewhere we would fall just short.

Updated

Large numbers of British citizens continued to wait outside Kabul airport over the weekend despite terror threats, desperately hoping there might still be a way to get on one of the last flights out of Afghanistan.

Several expressed dismay at the abrupt cessation of emails and calls from UK officials about evacuation plans and the absence of official advice about what to do after repatriation flights ended, with the final British troops having left on Saturday.

Concerns were raised again about whether there was a two-tier approach to getting people out of Afghanistan, with fears that single-nationality Britons had been prioritised over those of Afghan origin.

US 'assessing possibility' of having killed or injured civilians in airstrike

Captain Bill Urban, US central command spokesman, said:

US military forces conducted a self-defense unmanned over-the-horizon airstrike today on a vehicle in Kabul, eliminating an imminent ISIS-K threat to Hamad Karzai International airport.

We are confident we successfully hit the target. Significant secondary explosions from the vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material.

We are assessing the possibilities of civilian casualties, though we have no indications at this time. We remain vigilant for potential future threats.

US president Joe Biden looks on as the bodies of 11 of 13 American service members killed in the Kabul attack which also killed 169 Afghans this week return to home soil.

Updated

Signs point to Hazara Shias once again finding themselves a target of the Taliban. A recent Amnesty report found that Taliban militants were responsible for the murder of nine Hazaras in July, in the village of Mundarakht. Six of the men were shot and three were tortured to death, including one man who was strangled with his own scarf and had his arm muscles sliced off.

Attacks such as these have prompted a mass exodus of Hazara people over the border to Pakistan, and activists say that about 10,000 have arrived in the Pakistan city of Quetta, in Balochistan, where they are living in mosques and wedding halls, and renting rooms. Several Hazaras told the Guardian they had paid traffickers from £50 to £350 to get them across the border.

In contrast to the Turkish embassy which president Recep Erdogan just announced has returned to its building in the city after operating from the airport for two weeks, French diplomats have returned to Paris.

This is from the BBC’s Yalda Hakim, documenting Afghan children who are settling in Albania.

Turkey’s president Recep Erdogan has said the Turkish embassy in Kabul has returned to its building in the city and that Ankara would maintain its diplomatic presence in Afghanistan after operating from the airport for two weeks.

Al-Jazeera reports that Erdogan said in an interview with Turkish media on a flight back from Montenegro today:

They returned to our embassy building in the city centre the other day and they are continuing their activities from here. Our plan now is to maintain our diplomatic presence in this way. We are continuously updating our plans according to developments regarding the security situation.

Erdogan dismissed rpeorts of a plan in which Turkey was cited as being set to operate Kabul airport, with the Taliban responsible for security. He said Ankara would be in a difficult position if another attack occurred.

How can we give the security to you? How would we explain it to the world if you took over security and there is another bloodbath there? This is not an easy job.

Meanwhile, the Turkish foreign minister, in a joint news conference with his German counterpart, has said Turkey cannot take the burden of an influx of migrants from Afghanistan, according to Reuters. Turkey currently hosts 3.7m Syrian refugees as part of a 2016 deal with the EU.

“As Turkey, we have sufficiently carried out our moral and humanitarian responsibilities regarding migration,” Cavusoglu said. “It is out of the question for us to take an additional refugee burden.”

Updated

Here’s the aftermath of a rocket striking a house near Kabul airport.

It remains unclear who fired the rocket. It comes after US forces launched a “defensive” military strike against a vehicle carrying “multiple suicide bombers” from the Islamic State’s local affiliate in Afghanistan who were aiming to attack the airport, officials said.

There was no immediate word on casualties and few other details about the incident, which may have triggered a second blast in a nearby house.

Witnesses reported an explosion near Kabul airport and television footage showed black smoke rising into the sky. Taliban officials confirmed the US account. According to some reports, a child died in the second blast.

Updated

Two US congressmen criticized for a secret midweek visit to Kabul have defended their trip, claiming they were “uniquely situated” to undertake the fact-finding venture because they are military veterans.

Seth Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts, and the Michigan Republican Peter Meijer, both Iraq war veterans, flew out of Kabul on military aircraft, prompting a suggestion they took up resources and space desperately needed for evacuees.

Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, said the trip “was not a good idea” while officials at the Pentagon, caught by surprise, suggested the politicians had interfered with the US mission.

The daughter of a British shopkeeper who was killed in the terror attack on Kabul airport has begged the UK government to help bring her mother home.

Zohra Popal, 23, said her family feel “ignored” by the Foreign Office, which has not made contact since news of his death was confirmed. Her 60-year-old father, Musa, was among three British citizens, including a child, who were killed in the suicide attack.

Mohamed Niazi, 29, a taxi driver from Aldershot, Hampshire, was also among the victims, PA Media reports.

Popal said she fears for the life of her mother Saleema, 60, who remains in Afghanistan, and members of her family who she believe could be targeted by the Taliban.

I’ve never experienced pain like this. I feel like I’m falling to a thousand pieces. Most of us haven’t slept or eaten in days. I just want to hug my dad once more, and I want to kiss my mother.

My nephew, Hameed Popal, who is just 14 years old, is still missing after the bomb. And now I’m really worried about my mum and other siblings being targeted by the Taliban. I don’t think any of us could take another loss.

Her father was a British-Afghan who moved to the UK in 1999. He had been running the Madeena Supermarket in Hendon, north London, for more than 20 years. He and his wife flew to Kandahar in south Afghanistan in June to visit family, including their son and daughter who still live in the country.

Amid rising tensions after the Taliban takeover, they travelled to Kabul airport. He is said to have been waving his British passport at American soldiers at the gate when the blast happened.

His daughter added:

My mother, she had to crawl away, covered in blood and pieces of people. She saw everything. There was blood everywhere, she told us, and they were slipping in it when they were trying to get up.

It was so loud that some of them are still deaf and can’t hear each other. It was a living nightmare for them. Had we known anything like this would happen, we wouldn’t have let them go.

Her mother, who was watching from a distance, was uninjured, but their grandson Hameed, who was standing with his grandfather, remains missing.

My mum, she has no documents now because my dad was holding everything when he died. She and the rest of my family are still in danger, and we still might lose them. And yet we can’t get through to the Foreign Office. Their number is constantly engaged. We feel completely ignored. But we must get them to safety. I can’t live without them. We need the government’s help.

Musa Popal, 60, who was killed in the terror attack on Kabul airport in Afghanistan.
Musa Popal, 60, who was killed in the terror attack on Kabul airport in Afghanistan on Thursday. Photograph: Family Handout/PA

Updated

A Conservative MP who served in Afghanistan has called the situation in the country and branded the UK government’s handling of the withdrawal of troops as a “catastrophe”.

Johnny Mercer, the MP for Plymouth Moor View and a former British army officer, wrote in the Sunday Times that the exit from the country was “shameful”.

My rage is only quelled by tears, which inevitably give way to rage again. And so it goes on, day after day. The tears are for what has been lost: friends, fathers, bodies and minds. The rage is towards our leaders – that kind of generation-defining rage from which I hope defining change comes.”

He agreed that deploying troops to fight the Taliban would not have been the correct choice, but added: “But this self-inflicted hell? Other options were available. It’s unforgivable.”

Mercer, a former veterans minister, has been consistently critical of the government’s handling of the crisis, and claimed he had contacted the prime minister urging him to say something to the families of those who had died in the 20-year conflict, PA Media reports.

This must be a watershed. It is worse than ‘our Vietnam’. Welcome these Afghan refugees into your communities and your hearts. Even before this, they were the most war-torn, brutalised people on earth. I cannot believe what we have done to them.

Johnny Mercer MP joins a group of former interpreters for the British and allied forces in Afghanistan on Parliament Square to protest on 18 August.
Johnny Mercer MP joins a group of former interpreters for the British and allied forces in Afghanistan on Parliament Square to protest on 18 August. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Updated

A former Royal Marine has evacuated about 170 dogs and cats from an animal shelter in Afghanistan to the UK, a friend has told PA Media.

But Paul Farthing’s privately funded charter flight, which arrived at London’s Heathrow airport at about 7.30am today, was not carrying his 24 staff and dependants from the Nowzad shelter in Kabul.

Dominic Dyer, an animal welfare campaigner and supporter of Farthing, said the former marine was forced to travel back alone after being told it was not possible to find people to fill the plane’s seats, according to PA Media.

Dyer said the shelter staff were “still in their homes” with the charity in contact with them, adding that efforts would be made to try to get them out of Afghanistan were denied entry to the airport in Kabul on Thursday. The Taliban claimed they did not have the right paperwork.

They are [among] thousands of Afghans … that have a right to leave the country but actually have no safe passage out at the moment … Tragic and not the ending we wanted, but we fell victim to the chaos and the difficulties of getting through those gates.

Dyer claimed an appeal was put in to the British government “to see if we could fill seats with refugees within the airport”.

They told us there was no one they could find that could actually fill that aircraft. In fact, they had more air capacity than they had people, which probably tells you an awful lot about the final days of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

He added that “all efforts were made to do what we could” but it was “not possible to find anyone”, with Farthing loading the animals with the help of service people and leaving “on his own”.

Farthing’s return to the UK comes after an audio recording of an expletive-laden message he reportedly left for a government aide was leaked. The recording, obtained by the Times, captured Farthing berating Peter Quentin, a special adviser to defence secretary, Ben Wallace, whom he accused of “blocking” efforts to arrange the evacuation flight after complaining it was distracting from a focus on evacuating the most vulnerable.

Dyer today rejected suggestions of “pets being put before people” as a “concoction of the Ministry of Defence” to “divert attention from a humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan”.

Pen Farthing, who was risking his life in Kabul to get his people and animals to Britain, was completely justified in holding Mr Quentin to account for his actions and I think it’s time Ben Wallace came clean on how this rogue adviser attempted to delay flight authorisation for Operation Arc into Kabul.

Pen Farthing, founder of animal shelter Nowzad, stands in front of a cage in Kabul in 2012.
Pen Farthing, founder of animal shelter Nowzad, stands in front of a cage in Kabul in 2012. Photograph: Omar Sobhani/Reuters

Hello and greetings to everyone reading, wherever you are in the world. Mattha Busby here to take you through the next few hours of developments in Afghanistan. Thanks to my colleague Alex Mistlin for covering the blog up until now. Please feel free to drop me a line on Twitter or message me via email (mattha.busby.freelance@guardian.co.uk) with any tips or thoughts on our coverage.

Updated

That’s all from me, Alex Mistlin. Passing on to my colleague Mattha Busby now.

Goodbye and stay safe.

  • The US has carried out a military attack against a vehicle containing multiple suicide bombers that represented “an imminent Isis-K threat”. A military official said the strike caused “significant secondary explosions” indicating the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material in the vehicle.
  • A rocket has struck a neighbourhood north-west of Kabul’s international airport and killed a child, as the US evacuation winds down following the Taliban’s lightning takeover of the country, an Afghan police chief has said.
  • The two incidents appear to be separate although this remains unconfirmed.
  • The US remains on high alert for another possible terror attack at Kabul airport and has warned citizens to leave the area immediately. The US embassy in Kabul issued a warning of a ‘specific, credible threat’ on Saturday.
  • The Taliban and the departing US forces are aiming for a swift handover of Kabul airport, a Taliban official told Reuters on Sunday. “We are waiting for the final nod from the Americans to secure full control over Kabul airport,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
  • The final plane carrying British troops has arrived at RAF Brize Norton. In a video uploaded to Twitter this morning, Boris Johnson praised the more than 1,000 military personnel, diplomats and officials who took part in the operation in Afghanistan.
  • The Russian ambassador to Kabul, Dmitry Zhirnov, has said the Taliban could take over the Panjshir province within hours. Panjshir province in the north-east of the country has emerged as a centre of resistance to Taliban rule in recent weeks.
  • France and Britain will submit a resolution to an emergency United Nations meeting due Monday on Afghanistan proposing a safe zone in Kabul to protect people trying to leave the country, French president Emmanuel Macron said.

Updated

The US has the capacity to evacuate the approximately 300 US citizens remaining in Afghanistan who want to leave before President Joe Biden’s Tuesday deadline, said senior Biden administration officials.

Reuters Reports:

“This is the most dangerous time in an already extraordinarily dangerous mission these last couple of days,” America’s top diplomat, secretary of state Antony Blinken, said not long before the confirmation of a US drone strike against suspected Islamic State militants highlighted the grave threat in the war’s final days.

The evacuation flow of Americans kept pace even as a new State Department security alert, issued hours before the military action, instructed people to leave the airport area immediately “due to a specific, credible threat.”

Joe Biden warned on Saturday that another terrorist attack in Kabul was highly likely in the next 24 to 36 hours, and said the US drone strike that killed two Islamic State targets in retaliation for the deaths of 13 US service members and as many as 170 civilians on Thursday would not be the last such action.

Updated

US President Joe Biden travelled to Dover air force base, Delaware for the repatriation of the bodies of the 13 US troops who died.

US President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden disembark from Air Force One upon arrival at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
US President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden disembark from Air Force One upon arrival at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

As the president was greeting the families of the fallen, his national security adviser was reasserting that the US would continue to be involved in Afghanistan, even after Tuesday’s evacuation deadline.

You can read our full report below:

A Pentagon official told CNN that the strike took out an “imminent Isis-K threat” to Kabul airport.

The source said: “We are confident we successfully hit the target.”

There is no currently no indication of civilian casualties although this is unconfirmed.

Updated

A US military spokesperson has confirmed to Reuters that the US carried out a drone strike on a vehicle in Kabul.

The vehicle was carrying “multiple” Islamic State suicide bombers heading for the Kabul airport.

A military official said the strike on Sunday caused “significant secondary explosions” indicating the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material in the vehicle.

AP reporting that a US drone strike targeting a vehicle with “multiple suicide bombers” on its way to Kabul airport, has succeeded in “eliminating” the intended target.

It remains unclear whether the strike is related to the earlier blast reported in a neighbourhood three miles north-west of Kabul airport, which resulted in at least one casualty, a child.

Updated

Reuters: US military strike target a potential suicide bomb attack

American forces launched a military strike in Kabul targeting a possible suicide car bomb that was aiming to attack the airport, US officials told Reuters.

The strike initially appeared to be a separate incident to the strike at a residential property three miles north-west of the airport, though this is yet to be confirmed.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the strike targeted suspected ISKP militants. They said they were citing initial information and cautioned it could change.

The story was previously confirmed by a Taliban spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, who said in a message to journalists that the strike had taken place.

To reiterate, it is not immediately clear if the blast near the airport and the US strike are the same event.

The attack comes as the US winds down a historic airlift in which tens of thousands of people were evacuated from Kabul’s airport.

Updated

AP: Child dead in Kabul rocket attack

A rocket has struck a neighbourhood north-west of Kabul’s international airport and killed a child, as the US evacuation winds down following the Taliban’s lightning takeover of the country, an Afghan police chief has said.

The attack comes as the US winds down a historic airlift in which tens of thousands of people were evacuated from Kabul’s international airport, scene of much of the chaos that has engulfed the Afghan capital since the Taliban took over two weeks ago.

Joe Biden warned on Saturday that a further terrorist attack in Kabul was highly likely in the next 24 to 36 hours, and said the US drone strike that killed two Islamic State targets in retaliation for the deaths of 13 US service members and as many as 170 civilians on Thursday would not be the last such action.

You can read the full report from Guardian staff and agencies here:

Updated

More on the US military strike in Kabul:

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the strike was targeting suspected ISKP militants.

They said they were citing initial information and cautioned it could change.

Updated

US 'carries out military strike in Kabul', according to reports

Reuters’ foreign correspondent Idrees Ali says two American officials have informed him the US has carried out a military strike in Kabul.

This is understood to be referring to the rocket strike that took place near Kabul airport but this is as yet unconfirmed.

Reports suggest the strike resulted in at least one casualty but this too is yet to be confirmed.

Updated

The US evacuation effort has been complicated by the threat of more attacks such as Thursday’s suicide bombing that killed at least 170 Afghan civilians and 13 American troops.

Joe Biden warned on Saturday that another terrorist attack in Kabul was highly likely in the next 24 to 36 hours.

Sullivan confirmed the US would not have an embassy presence in Afghanistan as of 1 September but said the US would consider “more strikes, other operations” against ISKP, the extremist group understood to have carried out the attack.

Sullivan said:

The US is capable of suppressing the terrorism threat in Afghanistan without a permanent military presence on the ground.

Updated

Sullivan: Taliban will allow for safe passage after 31 August

Jake Sullivan, US president Joe Biden’s national security adviser, said the US would continue working with the Taliban to ensure safe passage for those wishing to leave Afghanistan beyond the 31 August Deadline.

US forces are set to wind up their evacuation mission in Kabul before the Tuesday’s deadline but concerns remain about those remaining in the country beyond the deadline.

Since 14 August, the US has evacuated and facilitated the evacuation of approximately 114,400 people and roughly 120,000 since the end of July.

Jake Sullivan speaking at a press briefing in Washington.
Jake Sullivan speaking at a press briefing in Washington. Photograph: Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock

Updated

It’s unclear whether there are any casualties but the explosion, roughly three miles (5km) north-west of Kabul airport, appears to have been caused by a rocket strike.

Television footage and video circulating on social media show black smoke rising into the sky above the building, reportedly a residential property.

Updated

Reuters: Kabul explosion appears to have been a rocket attack

Reuters is reporting, based on witnesses, that the explosion heard minutes ago near Kabul airport appear to have been a rocket attack.

Updated

TOLO News, Afghanistan’s largest TV news network, now reporting that “a powerful explosion was heard moments ago in Kabul”.

Stay right here for updates on this story as we get them.

Updated

Reports and video circulating on social media, appear to indicate that the blast was the result of a rocket hitting a house close to the airport.

Whether there have been any casualties remains unclear.

The BBC Pakistan and Afghanistan correspondent Secunder Kermani cites the Afghan health ministry saying there’s been another blast near Kabul airport.

The exact location and cause of the blast are as yet unconfirmed but I’ll be keeping you updated.

Updated

US president Joe Biden has been travelling to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to honour members of the US military killed in a suicide bomb attack during the evacuation of civilians from Kabul airport last week.

An Islamic State suicide bombing just outside Kabul airport on Thursday killed scores of Afghans and 13 American troops.

Biden was expected to receive the service members’ remains that were being flown back to the US. Families of those troops were also expected to be present.

US President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden arrive to board Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, for a trip to Dover Air Force Base on Sunday.
Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden arrive to board Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base for a trip to Dover Air Force Base on Sunday. Photograph: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Updated

A Taliban fighter shot dead an Afghan folk singer in a restive mountain province under unclear circumstances, his family said on Sunday.

The killing of Fawad Andarabi was reported by the Associated Press news agency, which said the Taliban had previously came out to his home and searched it, even drinking tea with the musician.

We reported earlier that a former Afghan minister had also tweeted about the killing.

But his son Jawad Andarabi told the AP that something changed on Friday. “He was innocent, a singer who only was entertaining people,” his son said. “They shot him in the head on the farm.”

His son said he wanted justice and that a local Taliban council promised to punish his father’s killer.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told the AP that the insurgents would investigate the incident, but had no other details.

Andarabi played the ghichak, a bowed lute, and sang traditional songs about his birthplace, his people and Afghanistan as a whole. A video online showed him at one performance, sitting on a rug with the mountains of home surrounding him as he sang.

Updated

The UK’s former ambassador to Afghanistan has poured scorn on suggestions that the Taliban have “changed”, but insisted that the UK would have to engage with them.

Sir Nicholas Kay, ambassador to Afghanistan from 2017 to 2019, told Times Radio he had first encountered the Taliban in early 1995, shortly after they captured Kandahar.

“I don’t think they’ve changed. You know, I think you know, one of their strengths, if you like, is their single-mindedness and their strength of conviction and their faith in what they are doing and their cause,” he added.

“What we have seen is that they are more aware of what they should be saying, and maybe that will translate into being able to actually do some of the things that they’re saying.”

But he added the UK would have to engage with the Taliban. He said: “We do need to engage with them, we don’t need to trust them, we need to test them.”

This is Ben Quinn picking up the blog for a while now while Alex takes a break.

Updated

Alex Mistlin here on the Guardian’s Afghanistan live blog. I’ll be bringing you updates here as they come in.

Some of the top stories coming out of the country and around the world:

  • The US remains on high alert for another possible terror attack at Kabul airport and has warned citizens to leave the area immediately. The US embassy in Kabul issued a warning of a ‘specific, credible threat’ on Saturday.
  • The Taliban and the departing US forces are aiming for a swift handover of Kabul airport, a Taliban official told Reuters on Sunday. “We are waiting for the final nod from the Americans to secure full control over Kabul airport,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
  • The final plane carrying British troops has arrived at RAF Brize Norton. In a video uploaded to Twitter this morning, Boris Johnson praised the more than 1,000 military personnel, diplomats and officials who took part in the operation in Afghanistan.
  • The Russian ambassador to Kabul, Dmitry Zhirnov, has said the Taliban could take over the Panjshir province within hours. Panjshir province in the north-east of the country has emerged as a centre of resistance to Taliban rule in recent weeks.
  • France and Britain will submit a resolution to an emergency United Nations meeting due Monday on Afghanistan proposing a safe zone in Kabul to protect people trying to leave the country, French president Emmanuel Macron said.
Taliban fighters patrol a street in Kabul.
Taliban fighters patrol a street in Kabul. Photograph: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images

Pope Francis called on the world’s Christians to pray and carry out fasting to ask God to bring about peace and coexistence in Afghanistan.

Reuters reports:

Speaking to pilgrims and tourists in St. Peter’s Square for his weekly blessing, Francis said he was following events in Afghanistan with “great worry” and was participating in the suffering of those mourning the dead in last Thursday’s suicide bombing at Kabul airport.

He also said he was close to “those who are seeking help and protection”, an apparent reference to those trying to leave the country.

“I ask all to continue to help those in need and to pray so that dialogue and solidarity can bring about a peaceful and fraternal coexistence that offers hope for the future of the country,” he said.

“As Christians, this situation commits us. And because of this I appeal to everyone to intensify prayer and carry out fasting, prayer and fasting, prayer and penitence. Now is the time to do it.”

Pope Francis waves to faithful from his studio’s window overlooking St. Peter’s square.
Pope Francis waves to faithful from his studio’s window overlooking St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican. Photograph: Gregorio Borgia/AP

Updated

Amid bitter recriminations between government departments over who was to blame for leaving behind thousands of people with links to the UK, a former head of the British Army questioned why ministers had not engaged earlier on the safety of Afghan allies.

Gen Lord Richard Dannatt said: “On the particular issue of those who we knew were in danger, people who had worked for us, interpreters, former locally engaged civilians, this issue has been in the media,” he told Times Radio.

He said it was “unfathomable” that the UK government appeared to have been “asleep on watch” when it came to ensuring the safety of Afghans who helped soldiers and officials.

Gen Lord Richard Dannatt’s comments followed the final flight containing UK troops and diplomatic staff from Kabul, bringing to an end Britain’s 20-year engagement in Afghanistan.

The UK’s ambassador to the country, Sir Laurie Bristow, was among those who arrived on Sunday morning at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire.

Updated

Al Jazeera’s Charlotte Bellis, reporting from Kabul, said the Taliban are wary of an attack by extremist organisation, Islamic State, with the possibility remaining “very high”.

Al Jazeera reports:

The Taliban is particularly concerned about the south entrance of the airport, which is the main entrance protected by the armed group, as well as the northwestern corner of the airport, Bellis said.

The Taliban said they were incredibly worried about this ISIL threat. They had pushed people back, they had put barbed wire across the road to try and stop anybody getting close and trying to disperse the crowds.

The British ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Laurie Bristow, has posted a video from RAF Brize Norton in which he says “we will do everything we can to protect the gains of the last 10 years and above all to help the Afghan people achieve the peace ands security they deserve”.

He restated his commitment to “British nationals and Afghans who still need our support and we will putting pressure on the Taliban to ensure safe passage for these people”.

He said the embassy would operate from Qatar for “the time being”.

Updated

Fears are growing for a group of Afghan refugees who fled the country last month only to find themselves marooned on the border between Poland and Belarus in a “Kafkaesque” political standoff.

The 32 refugees – women, men, and a child of 15 years old – have been stuck in a small, muddy patch of land between the two countries for almost three weeks with no access to clean water, insufficient shelter and intermittent food supplies, according to a Polish NGO.

They are not being allowed in to Poland, with border guards preventing them from entering. Neither are they being allowed back into Belarus, where they came from in the hope of being able to cross into the European Union.

You can read the full report from Lizzy Davies below:

Further to the news that girls and boys will no longer be able to study together in universities in Afghanistan.

The chairperson of Afghanistan’s independent human rights commission (HRC), Shaharzad Akbar, has called on world governments to hold the Taliban to account on women’s rights.

Updated

To recap the state of play in Afghaistan:

The US military has entered the final phase of evacuations from Kabul. Taliban officials say they are ready to take over airport pending the “final nod” from US forces.

Just over 1,000 civilians at the airport remain to be flown out before troops withdraw, a Western security official said on Sunday.

US president Joe Biden vowed to keep up airstrikes against the Islamic extremist group, ISKP, whose suicide bombing at the Kabul airport killed at least 170 Afghans and 13 American service members.

Updated

Masoud Andarabi, the former minister of interior for Afghanistan, said the musician Fawad Andarabi has been “brutally killed” by the Taliban.

The nationally famous artist was allegedly dragged out of his home and shot by Taliban forces.

Andarabi said the killing took place in Andarab, in the southern part of Baghlan province.

Updated

Pajhwok, Afghanistan’s largest news agency, reports that the Taliban has banned the airing of music and women’s voices in Kandahar province.

Operation Herrick, codename for the British contribution to the war in Afghanistan, largely operated in Kandahar and Helmand provinces.

Updated

Former officials and lecturers at Afghanistan universities have called on the Taliban to maintain and upgrade the country’s education system instead of creating a new one, AP reports.

Former minister of higher education Abas Basir said at a conference on higher education held by the Taliban that starting over is a mistake made by previous governments.

The former minister, Basir said:

Let’s not reject everything, starting a new system, we should work more on what we already have.

TOLO News journalist Ziar Khan Yaad has quoted the Taliban’s caretaker higher education minister saying: “Girls and boys will no longer be able to study together in universities and will continue to study in separate classes in accordance with Islamic law.”

TOLO News is Afghanistan’s largest TV news channel.

Taliban caretaker higher education minister Abdul Baqi Haqqani previously criticised the education system founded by the international community, saying that religious education was considered insignificant.

“[The] world tried to take religion out of scientific education which harmed the people,” Haqqani said.

Updated

New York Times reporter Sharif Hassan says the Taliban haven’t yet met Hazara leaders to engage them in talks about the formation of the future government.

The Taliban said on Saturday they were preparing a new cabinet as the US evacuation nears its end.

The Hazaras are a Hazaragi and Dari-speaking ethnic group that primarily reside in central Afghanistan. They are a significant minority group in the country with a population of 8 million people.

The Hazaras, along with other predominantly Shia ethnic groups, have been fearful of persecution in the wake of the Taliban taking power.

Updated

Summary


Alex Mistlin here on the Guardian’s Afghanistan live blog.

The US remains on high alert for another possible terror attack at Kabul airport and has warned citizens to leave the area immediately.

The US embassy in Kabul on Sunday issued an alert – its second in as many days – of security threats at specific areas of the airport, including access gates, following an earlier warning from president Joe Biden that another terror attack in Kabul was “highly likely”.

Here are today’s other key developments:

  • The US embassy in Kabul issued a warning of a ‘specific, credible threat’. Following its warning on Saturday that US citizens should “immediately” leave areas outside the Kabul airport gates, the US embassy in Kabul issued another warning on Sunday.
  • The Taliban and the departing US forces are aiming for a swift handover of Kabul airport, a Taliban official told Reuters on Sunday. “We are waiting for the final nod from the Americans to secure full control over Kabul airport,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
  • The final plane carrying British troops has arrived at RAF Brize Norton. In a video uploaded to Twitter this morning, Boris Johnson praised the more than 1,000 military personnel, diplomats and officials who took part in the operation in Afghanistan.
  • The Russian ambassador to Kabul, Dmitry Zhirnov, has said the Taliban could take over the Panjshir province within hours. Panjshir province in the north-east of the country has emerged as a centre of resistance to Taliban rule in recent weeks.
  • Joe Biden warned on Saturday that another terrorist attack in Kabul was highly likely in the next 24 to 36 hours, and said the US drone strike that killed two Islamic State targets in retaliation for the deaths of 13 US service members and as many as 170 civilians on Thursday would not be the last such action.
  • Musa Papal has been named by his family as a British victim of the Kabul airport suicide bombing. Papal, 60, left his home in north London in May to visit family in Kandahar and was killed in the airport blast. Another Briton killed in the Kabul attack was Mohammad Niazi, a 29-year-old taxi driver.
  • The Pentagon said the US has helped a total of 117,000 people evacuate from Afghanistan, including 6,800 in the past 24 hours.
  • France and Britain will submit a resolution to an emergency United Nations meeting due Monday on Afghanistan proposing a safe zone in Kabul to protect people trying to leave the country, French president Emmanuel Macron said.
  • Up to 9,000 people who may have been eligible to escape – such as women, journalists, and aid workers – were left behind during the British evacuation effort, reports the Sunday Times.
  • Thousands of emails to the Foreign Office from MPs and charities detailing urgent cases of Afghans trying to escape from Kabul have not been read, including cases flagged by government ministers, the Observer has been told.
  • The US embassy in Kabul warned earlier that US citizens at the airport gates “should leave immediately”. The embassy also warned, citing security threats, that citizens should avoid traveling to the airport because of security threats.

Updated

The UK prime minister Boris Johnson has published a letter to “all those who served in Afghanistan.”

“Over the last two decades, many thousands of you gave your lives to services in Afghanistan, often in the most arduous conditions. I realise this will be an especially difficult time for the friends and loved ones of the 457 British services members who laid down their lives.”

Updated

The Russian Ambassador to Kabul, Dmitry Zhirnov has said that the Taliban could take over the Panjshir province within hours.

Panjshir province in the north-east of the country has emerged as a centre of resistance to Taliban rule in recent weeks. Along with Baghlan, Panjshir is one of two provinces reportedly not controlled by the Taliban.

Sputnik, a Russian state-owned news agency reports:

“I think they could take over Panjshir in a day, maybe even in a few hours, but they don’t do it to avoid bloodshed,” Zhirnov said on a YouTube Live show.

The diplomat added that the situation in the only Afghan province that had not fallen to the Taliban was relatively calm.

Zhirnov also said that the Islamic State suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai international airport in Kabul represented a challenge to the Taliban and not the United States. He added that there was a fierce confrontation between the two extremist groups, Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) and the Taliban.

ISKP was founded just under six years ago after representatives of IS made their way to south-western Pakistan to meet disaffected Taliban commanders and other extremists who felt marginalised within the jihadist movement in the region.

Updated

Earlier, AP reported that the crowd waiting outside Kabul airport’s gates has thinned out following the warning of a “specific, credible” threat issued by the US embassy in the early hours of Sunday morning.

President Biden warned on Saturday that another terrorist attack in Kabul was highly likely in the next 24 to 36 hours, and said the US drone strike that killed two Islamic State targets in retaliation for the deaths of 13 US service members and as many as 170 civilians on Thursday would not be the last such action.

President Biden warned on Saturday that another terrorist attack in Kabul was highly likely in the next 24 to 36 hours.
President Biden warned on Saturday that another terrorist attack in Kabul was highly likely in the next 24 to 36 hours. Photograph: Pete Marovich/UPI/REX/Shutterstock

Updated

To recap the big UK news:

The final plane carrying British troops has arrived at RAF Brize Norton, bringing an end to the UK evacuation effort, Operation Pitting.

Labour has accused government ministers of being “missing in action” during the Afghanistan crisis as the blame game over the handling of the withdrawal after a 20-year campaign in the country began.

The Sunday Times claims that up to 9,000 people who may have been eligible to escape – such as women, journalists, and aid workers – were left behind.

Defence secretary Ben Wallace previously said he believed there were between 800 and 1,100 Afghans eligible under the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (Arap) scheme who would be left behind, while about 100 and 150 UK nationals would remain in Afghanistan, although Wallace said some of those were staying willingly.

Updated

Guardian foreign correspondent Jason Burke has written on the parallel between US president Biden’s pledge to exact revenge for the Islamic State suicide bombing in Kabul last week and the words of President George W Bush in the wake of 9/11.

Biden pledged an end to “America’s longest war” in April. Outlining his intention to end the US military presence in Afghanistan prior the the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

The decision has received criticism in diplomatic and military circles in the wake of the Taliban seizing power.

You can read Jason Burke’s full piece below:

Updated

A former head of the British Army said the UK government was “asleep on watch” in relation to the protection of Afghans who helped soldiers and officials.

Speaking on Times Radio, Gen Lord Richard Dannatt said:

“This issue has been on politicians’ desks for two to three years and, certainly, it’s been there during the course of this year.”

Labour shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said the “key priority” of the UK government should now be to “make sure we get humanitarian assistance in to the people of Afghanistan”.

She told Sky News: “Right now, the UK needs to get its act together and get its plans in place to save the lives of those who supported us.”

Updated

The Wall Street Journal (paywall) reports that Taliban leaders, seeking have told farmers to stop cultivating opium poppies, residents of some major poppy-growing areas say.

The move comes as the Taliban court international recognition after seizing power in Afghanistan.

This has caused raw opium prices to soar across the country.

“If Tal­iban ban the cul­ti­va­tion of poppy, peo­ple will die from star­va­tion, es­pe­cially when in­ternational aid stops,” a poppy farmer in Uruz­gan said.

BBC World News anchor Yalda Hakim reports that almost all internet and telecom services have been disrupted by the Taliban in Panjshir.

Panjshir province in the north-east of the country has emerged as a centre of resistance to Taliban rule in recent weeks. It’s currently controlled by the Second Resistance, and with Baghlan is one of two provinces reportedly not controlled by the Taliban.

Updated

The British ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Laurie Bristow, is among the military and diplomatic personnel evacuated from Kabul who have landed at RAF Brize Norton base in Oxfordshire.

The government said of the 15,000 people evacuated since the Taliban seized Kabul, 5,000 of those were British nationals and their families.

More than 8,000 Afghans who helped the British effort as interpreters or in other roles, or who are otherwise vulnerable to persecution by the regime, were also able to flee to safety with their families.

Addressing the families and loved ones of the British troops who “gave their all”, Boris Johnson said: “Your suffering and your hardship were not in vain.”

He described the UK departure from Afghanistan as “the culmination of a mission unlike anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes”.

Laurie Bristow speaks with an HMG staff member as they facilitate the UK evacuation effort in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Laurie Bristow speaks with an HMG staff member as they facilitate the UK evacuation effort in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photograph: Reuters

Updated

UK defence secretary Ben Wallace said yesterday he believed there were between 800 and 1,100 Afghans eligible under the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (Arap) scheme who would be left behind, while about 100 and 150 UK nationals would remain in Afghanistan, although some of those were staying willingly.

On the fact that not everyone eligible for evacuation from Kabul could be rescued, Vice-Admiral Key said: “That is both true and a matter of great sadness for all of us that have been involved in this.

“Whilst we recognise and I pay testament to the achievement of everything that has been achieved by coalition forces, but particularly the British contingent, over the last two weeks, in the end we know that there are some really sad stories of people who have desperately tried to leave that we have – no matter how hard our efforts – we have been unsuccessful in evacuating.”

Vice-Admiral Ben Key, Chief of Joint Operations, who commands Operation Pitting, speaks to the media at RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire.
Vice-Admiral Ben Key, Chief of Joint Operations, who commands Operation Pitting, speaks to the media at RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

Updated

The final plane carrying UK troops arrived at RAF Brize Norton from Kabul today , drawing to a close Britain’s 20-year engagement in Afghanistan and a two-week operation (Operation Pitting) to rescue UK nationals and Afghan allies.

Speaking at RAF Brize Norton, Vice-Admiral Ben Key, the chief of joint operations, who commands Operation Pitting, said the withdrawal could not be considered a success until the US and other allies had completed their operations.

Key said:

Although the United Kingdom’s Operation Pitting finishes today, of course the United States are still engaged in their own withdrawal and I would be very nervous in saying we had completed a successful withdrawal from Afghanistan until all our allies and partners have returned.

The United States has provided the framework for security in Kabul as part of a huge international effort and so operations continue even if the UK’s particular contribution concludes today.

Updated

Final plane carrying British troops touches down in UK

The final plane carrying British troops has arrived at RAF Brize Norton.

In a video uploaded to Twitter this morning, Boris Johnson praised the more than 1,000 military personnel, diplomats and officials who took part in the operation in Afghanistan.

He said: “UK troops and officials have worked around the clock to a remorseless deadline in harrowing conditions.”

And described the UK departure from Afghanistan as “the culmination of a mission unlike anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes”.

Video below, courtesy of Sky News:

Updated

And more on that story, the Observer front page today.

Thousands of emails to the Foreign Office from MPs and charities detailing urgent cases of Afghans trying to escape from Kabul have not been read, including cases flagged by government ministers.

In many cases, emails detailing the cases of Afghans who fear for their families’ lives appear to have been unopened for days.

An email from the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, sent on Monday was still unread on Thursday.

You can read the full report here:

Updated

In the video, UK prime minister Boris Johnson, said Britain’s departure from Afghanistan was “the culmination of a mission unlike anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes”.

Two decades of engagement in Afghanistan by British troops came to an end on Saturday night, brining a close to the largest evacuation mission since the second world war.

Defence secretary Ben Wallace previously said he believed there were between 800 and 1,100 Afghans eligible under the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (Arap) scheme who would be left behind, while around 100 and 150 UK nationals will remain in Afghanistan, although some of those were staying willingly.

The Observer reports today that thousands of emails from MPs and charities highlighting potentially eligible cases went unread by the department.

Updated

Johnson said:

Though we would not have wished to leave in this way, we have to recognise that we came in with the United States, in defence and support of the US and the US military did the overwhelming bulk of the fighting. Though we now leave with the United States, we will remain represented in the region. Together with our allies in America and Europe and around the world, we will engage with the Taliban not on the basis of what they say but what they do.

Boris Johnson comments on evacuations after Kabul blasts
Boris Johnson comments on evacuations after Kabul blasts Photograph: UK Pool

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressed the families and loved ones of British military personnel in a video posted on Twitter this morning.

“Your suffering and your hardship were not in vain,” he said.

“It was no accident that there’s been no terrorist attack launched against Britain or any other western country from Afghanistan in the last 20 years.”

Alex Mistlin here taking over. If you’ve spotted a mistake or an update I’ve missed you can get in touch via Twitter: @amistlin

I’ll be bringing you all the latest developments as the Taliban and the departing US forces negotiate the handover of Kabul airport while the US Embassy in Kabul warns of a ‘specific, credible threat’.

That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. Thanks for following along – my colleague Alex Mistlin will be bringing you the latest for the next few hours.

The backroom discussions are a sign of the country’s traditional strongmen coming back to life after the Taliban’s stunning military campaign.

It will be a challenge for any entity to rule Afghanistan for long without consensus between the country’s patchwork of ethnicities, most analysts say.

Unlike their previous period in power before 2001, the predominantly Pashtun Taliban did seek support from Tajiks, Uzbeks and other minorities as they prepared their offensive last month.

“The Taliban at this point are very, very arrogant, because they just won militarily. But what we assume (is) that they know the risk of ruling the way they did before,” Noor said, referring to the previous Taliban regime’s exclusion of minority ethnic groups.

A band of veteran Afghan leaders, including two regional strongmen, are angling for talks with the Taliban and plan to meet within weeks to form a new front for holding negotiations on the country’s next government, a member of the group told Reuters.

Khalid Noor, son of Atta Mohammad Noor, the once-powerful governor of northern Afghanistan’s Balkh province, said the group comprised of veteran ethnic Uzbek leader Abdul Rashid Dostum and others opposed to the Taliban’s takeover.

“We prefer to negotiate collectively, because it is not that the problem of Afghanistan will be solved just by one of us,” Noor, 27, told Reuters in an interview from an undisclosed location.

“So, it is important for the entire political community of the country to be involved, especially the traditional leaders, those with power, with public support,” Noor said.

Atta Noor and Dostum, veterans of four decades of conflict in Afghanistan, both fled the country when the northern city of Mazar-i Sharif fell to the Taliban, the hardline Islamist group, without a fight.

Al Jazeera correspondent Ali Latifi, who is on the ground in Kabul:

On Saturday, hundreds of protesters, including many civil servants, gathered outside a bank while countless more lined up at cash machines. They said they hadn’t been paid for three to six months and were unable to withdraw cash. ATM machines were still operating, but withdrawals were limited to about US$200 every 24 hours.

Later Saturday, the central bank ordered commercial bank branches to open and allow customers to withdraw $200 per week, calling it a temporary measure.

It is, perhaps, dreadfully apt that an invasion which began 20 years ago as a counter-terrorism operation has ended in the horror of a mass casualty terrorist attack. The US-led attempt to destroy al-Qaida and rescue Afghanistan from the Taliban was undercut by the Iraq war, which spawned Islamic State. Now the circle is complete as an Afghan IS offshoot emerges as America’s new nemesis.

The Kabul airport atrocity shows just how difficult it is to break the cycle of violence, vengeance and victimisation. Joe Biden’s swift vow to hunt down the perpetrators and “make them pay” presumably means US combat forces will again be in action in Afghanistan soon. If the past is any guide, mistakes will be made, civilians will die, local communities will be antagonised. Result: more terrorists.

It is an obvious irony that US military chiefs in Kabul are collaborating with the Taliban, their sworn enemy, against the common IS foe as the evacuation ends. This suggests negotiators, on both sides, could have tried harder to reach a workable peace deal. It may augur well for future cooperation, for example on humanitarian aid. But the Taliban has many faces – and many cannot be trusted:

Summary

Here are the key developments from the last few hours:

  • The US Embassy in Kabul issued a warning of a ‘specific, credible threat’. Following its warning on Saturday that US citizens should “immediately” leave areas outside the Kabul airport gates, the US Embassy in Kabul issued another warning on Sunday, saying, “Due to a specific, credible threat, all US citizens in the vicinity of Kabul airport (HKIA), including the South (Airport Circle) gate, the new Ministry of the Interior, and the gate near the Panjshir Petrol station on the northwest side of the airport, should leave the airport area immediately.”
  • The Taliban and the departing US forces are aiming for a swift handover of Kabul airport, a Taliban official told Reuters on Sunday. “We are waiting for the final nod from the Americans to secure full control over Kabul airport,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
  • Two decades of engagement in Afghanistan by British troops have come to an end as the final members of UK military and diplomatic personnel left Kabul airport on Saturday night, brining a close to the largest evacuation mission since the second world war. Operation Pitting – where more than 1,000 troops, diplomats, and officials were dispatched to Afghanistan to rescue UK nationals and Afghan allies after the seizure of the country’s capital by the Taliban – airlifted more than 15,000 people to safety across just over a fortnight.
  • The US evacuated around 2,000 more people. US military and coalition flights took approximately 2,000 people from Kabul, Afghanistan, from 3am Eastern time to 3pm on Saturday, Reuters reports, citing a White House official.
  • Joe Biden warned on Saturday that another terrorist attack in Kabul was highly likely in the next 24 to 36 hours, and said the US drone strike which killed two Islamic State targets in retaliation for the deaths of 13 US service members and as many as 170 civilians on Thursday would not be the last such action.
  • Musa Papal has been named by his family as a British victim of the Kabul airport suicide bombing. Papal, 60, left his home in North London in May to visit family in Kandahar and was killed in the airport blast. Another Briton killed in the Kabul attack was Mohammad Niazi, a 29-year-old taxi driver who died along with his wife and two of their children after he went to Afghanistan to rescue them, Sky News reports.
  • The Pentagon said the US has helped a total of 117,000 people evacuate from Afghanistan, including 6,800 in the past 24 hours.
  • France and Britain will submit a resolution to an emergency United Nations meeting due Monday on Afghanistan proposing a safe zone in Kabul to protect people trying to leave the country, French president Emmanuel Macron said.
  • The families of Afghan interpreters who have fled the Taliban to the UK will be offered free English courses as part of a comprehensive package to help them settle in their new home.
  • Thousands of emails to the Foreign Office from MPs and charities detailing urgent cases of Afghans trying to escape from Kabul have not been read, including cases flagged by government ministers, the Observer has been told.
  • The US Embassy in Kabul warned earlier that US citizens at the airport gates “should leave immediately”. The embassy also warned, citing security threats, that citizens should avoid traveling to the airport because of security threats.

If you’re just joining us, here is our main story with all the key developments:

The US remains on high alert for another possible terror attack at Kabul airport and has warned citizens to “immediately” leave the area, as military forces moved into the final stage of evacuations from Afghanistan and the Taliban signalled its readiness to take over.

The US embassy in Kabul on Sunday issued an alert – its second in as many days – of security threats at specific areas of the airport, including access gates. It followed an earlier warning from president Joe Biden that another terror attack in Kabul was “highly likely”.

Biden said the US drone strike that killed two Islamic State targets in retaliation for the deaths of 13 US service members and as many as 170 civilians on Thursday would not be the last such action.

The president has also said he will stick by his Tuesday deadline to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan. On Sunday, a Western security official in the Afghan capital told Reuters just over 1,000 civilians inside the airport remain to be flown out before troops are pulled out:

The Observer’s editorial today argues that “Afghanistan is a tragedy, a parable and a cautionary tale for our age.”

As the last, desperate evacuees scramble aboard planes in Kabul, as suicide bombers threaten to kill yet more blameless people, as a vast tide of refugees inundates the border with Pakistan and as the remaining population cowers, trapped and in fear before a resurgent Taliban, all those in the west who fought for 20 long and bloody years to shape this country’s future must pause, stand back and ask themselves: what have we done?

Since the al-Qaida attacks on US cities on 11 September 2001, which triggered a global convulsion, remote, impoverished Afghanistan has touched, influenced and tested every great question, every big idea and movement – ideological, religious, geo-strategic – of our times. Many, for example, will view this staggering defeat, which is how history will surely judge it, as primarily a defeat for the problematic western concepts of humanitarian intervention and a rules-based world order.

It’s undeniable that significant, even inspirational advances were made as the Nato allies acted out their theories of nation-building. Generations of young Afghans gained an education. Careers opened up to girls and women. Healthcare was available to rural villages where none previously existed. Free media and free speech flourished. A crude, vital democracy took shape. These are proud achievements.

For Republicans it was a day of thoughts and prayers – and political opportunity.

When a suicide bombing in Kabul on Thursday killed 13 US troops and dozens of Afghan civilians, Republicans were careful to begin their official responses by paying tribute to the heroism of the fallen. Some, however, went on to demand the resignation of the commander-in-chief.

“It’s not a day for politics,” responded Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary.

But in truth the politicking had already begun, indicating how Republicans intend to exploit the Afghanistan crisis to diminish Joe Biden and defeat him at the polls.

The president’s decision to withdraw US forces by the end of August precipitated the collapse of the Afghan government and army far quicker than he predicted, a takeover by the Taliban and a chaotic evacuation. Biden has expressed no regret or remorse, noting that after 20 years there is little public support for continuing America’s longest war.

But Republicans smell blood, having until now struggled to find an effective line of attack against Biden as candidate or president. Although foreign policy rarely decides US elections, the critiques have fuelled a pre-existing narrative that the 78-year-old does not have “the right stuff”:

By Wednesday morning the last US troops will have left Kabul and the day will break on a country entirely controlled by the Taliban, the last shadow of American threat banished.

It is still uncertain what this second iteration of the caliphate will look like, but with foreigners finally gone, the shape of the new Afghanistan will come into sharper focus.

The Taliban have made clear they want to avoid a repeat of their 1990s rule when they presided over an international pariah state, mismanaged the economy and increased repression as discontent spread. What is less clear is whether they can achieve that, or how they will attempt it.

The pivot from fighting an insurgency to managing the government was always going to be difficult, and the Taliban have had less time to prepare than they expected. The speed with which Kabul fell caught even the Taliban by surprise, co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar has admitted, and it is clear the group had not yet pinned down who would rule, and how:

On Saturday in Kabul, hundreds of protesters, including many civil servants, gathered outside a bank while countless more lined up at cash machines, AP reports. They said they hadn’t been paid for three to six months and were unable to withdraw cash. ATM machines were still operating, but withdrawals were limited to about US$200 every 24 hours.

Later Saturday, the central bank ordered commercial bank branches to open and allow customers to withdraw $200 per week, calling it a temporary measure.

The economic crisis, which predates the Taliban takeover, could give Western nations leverage as they urge Afghanistan’s new rulers to form a moderate, inclusive government and allow people to leave after Tuesday.

Afghanistan is heavily dependent on international aid, which covered around 75% of the toppled Western-backed government’s budget. The Taliban have said they want good relations with the international community and have promised a more moderate form of Islamic rule than when they last governed the country, but many Afghans are deeply skeptical.

The Taliban cannot access almost any of the central bank’s US$9bn in reserves, most of which is held by the New York Federal Reserve. The International Monetary Fund has also suspended the transfer of some US$450 million. Without a regular supply of US dollars, the local currency is at risk of collapse, which could send the price of basic goods soaring.

Boris Johnson has responded to criticism that the rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan has undermined Britain’s 20-year involvement in the country, by telling those who served that the gains made there will not “swiftly be undone”.

In an open letter to current and former military personnel, the prime minister said they “should take the greatest pride” in their achievements in Afghanistan since the 2001 US-led invasion. He said they had succeeded in the “central mission” of keeping the UK safe from attacks masterminded from the country:

A former Royal Marine who founded an animal shelter in Kabul left an expletive-laden message for a government aide as he sought to place his staff and pets on a flight out of Afghanistan, according to reports.

The Times newspaper said it had obtained a leaked audio recording of Paul “Pen” Farthing berating Peter Quentin, a special adviser to the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, who he accused of “blocking” efforts to arrange a flight.

Farthing’s campaign to get workers and animals from the Nowzad shelter out of Afghanistan has caused controversy in recent days, after receiving a huge amount of public support.

Although visas were granted for his 24 staff and their dependents, Farthing refused to leave without his pets and aimed to get 200 dogs and cats out of the country.

On Friday, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced that the ex-marine and his animals were at Kabul airport and clearance for their charter flight had been sponsored by the UK government.

In the recorded message, reportedly sent on Monday, Farthing threatened to “destroy” Quentin on social media if he did not help arrange the evacuation:

More now on those comments from a Western security official at the airport, via Reuters:

US forces are in the final phase of their evacuation from Kabul and just over 1,000 civilians inside the airport remain to be flown out before troops are withdrawn, a Western security official in the Afghan capital said on Sunday.

The official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters a date and time for the end of the operation was yet to be decided. US President Joe Biden has said he will stick by his Tuesday deadline to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan.

“We want to ensure that every foreign civilian and those who are at risk are evacuated today. Forces will start flying out once this process is over,” said the official, who is stationed at Kabul airport.

Taliban aiming for swift handover of airport

The Taliban, Afghanistan’s new rulers, and the departing US forces are aiming for a swift handover of Kabul airport, a Taliban official told Reuters on Sunday.

“We are waiting for the final nod from the Americans to secure full control over Kabul airport,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

He said the militants, who seized control of the capital on 15 August after a lightning advance against the Western-backed government, had a team of technical experts and highly qualified engineers ready to take over the airport.

On the subject of UK evacuations of Afghans: thousands of emails to the Foreign Office from MPs and charities detailing urgent cases of Afghans trying to escape from Kabul have not been read, including cases flagged by government ministers, the Observer has been told.

The UK’s Afghanistan evacuation concluded on Saturday night with the departure of Britain’s final military and diplomatic personnel, bringing a sudden end to the 20-year deployment. More than 15,000 people have been brought out of the country in the last fortnight, in what ministers described as the largest UK military evacuation since the second world war.

However, amid accusations of government incompetence over elements of the evacuation effort, the Observer has seen evidence that an official email address used to collate potential Afghan cases from MPs and others regularly contained 5,000 unread emails throughout the week.

Michael Savage, Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Emma Graham-Harrison report:

More than 9,000 Afghans eligible to escape with UK's help may have been left behind – reports

In the UK, Labour has accused Government ministers of being “missing in action” during the Afghanistan crisis as the blame game over the handling of the withdrawal after a 20-year campaign in the country began.

The Sunday Times reported that fingers were being pointed at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office over a lack of escape routes from the country, with claims that up to 9,000 people who may have been eligible to escape - such as women, journalists, and aid workers – were left behind.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace previously said he believed there were between 800 and 1,100 Afghans eligible under the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (Arap) scheme who would be left behind, while around 100 and 150 UK nationals will remain in Afghanistan, although Mr Wallace said some of those were staying willingly.

But MPs have said that judging by their correspondence, they thought the true numbers were far higher.

Updated

Crowd outside Kabul airport has thinned following US warning – report

Citing an unnamed Western security official, AP reports that the crowd waiting outside Kabul airport’s gates has thinned out following the warning of a “specific, credible” threat issued by the US embassy in the early hours of Sunday morning.

The official said that evacuations have entered their final phase, with 1,000 people – the AP alerts do not specify which nationalities – currently inside the airport and awaiting flights.

Croatian police say 19 Afghan citizens evacuated from their country because of the threat from the Taliban have landed in Croatia, AP reports.

A police statement says the group arriving Saturday evening included three families with 10 children and a single man.

Police say the evacuees are people with links to the European Union delegation in Kabul and their families and have expressed intent to seek asylum in Croatia.

They will be housed in a camp for vulnerable groups since they include minors. No other details are immediately available.

How many Afghans wanting to be evacuated remain in the country?

It is difficult to determine how many Afghans remain in the country and want to leave.

US forces say that more than 113,500 people have been evacuated by all allied forces since the withdrawal began – but many of them are Americans or other western nationals.

But New York Times tried to pin down a figure a few days ago, and came up with the following numbers – but the figures are mostly for Afghans who worked with Americans, specifically.

Tens of thousands of Afghans who worked for the US government over the last 20 years, and are eligible for special visas, are desperate to leave.

And refugee and resettlement experts estimate that at least 300,000 Afghans are in imminent danger of being targeted by the Taliban for associating with Americans and US efforts to stabilise Afghanistan.

One congressional aide said the Biden administration had identified about 50,000 special visa applicants, and their families, to be evacuated. But the aide said far more were eligible.

Following the IS attack on the airport, the International Rescue Committee said in a statement:

With more than 500,000 people displaced this year, including at least 230,000 over the last two months, it is imperative that all Afghans who wish to do so are granted safe passage out of the country. Those who remain will require extensive humanitarian support.”

So it seems that the figure, albeit frustratingly vague, is likely in the low hundreds of thousands.

Updated

Here is where things stand at the airport at the moment, where it is currently nearing 6am on Sunday 29 August.

Taliban forces have sealed off the airport to most Afghans hoping for evacuation.

Although most of its allies have finished their evacuation flights, the US still plans to keep its round-the-clock flights going until the deadline. The Pentagon said on Saturday that the remaining contingent of US forces at the airport, now numbering fewer than 4,000, had begun their final withdrawal ahead of Biden’s deadline for ending the evacuation on Tuesday.

Most NATO troops have now left the country.

Yesterday’s embassy warning read:

Because of security threats at the Kabul airport, we continue to advise US citizens to avoid traveling to the airport and to avoid airport gates.

US citizens who are at the Abbey gate, East gate, North gate or the New Ministry of Interior gate now should leave immediately.

US Embassy in Kabul issues warning of 'specific, credible threat'

Following its warning yesterday that US citizens should “immediately” leave areas outside the Kabul airport gates, the US Embassy in Kabul issued another warning moments ago, saying:

Due to a specific, credible threat, all US citizens in the vicinity of Kabul airport (HKIA), including the South (Airport Circle) gate, the new Ministry of the Interior, and the gate near the Panjshir Petrol station on the northwest side of the airport, should leave the airport area immediately.

Some of the gates mentioned in today’s warnings differ from yesterday – which is to say, this warning is not simply a repetition of yesterday’s.

The warning also urges US citizens to avoid travelling to the airport.

The warning comes hours after Biden warned that another terror attack at the airport was “highly likely” in the next 24-36 hours.

This is breaking news – we will have more information shortly.

The UK government last night unveiled “operation warm welcome” for the thousands of arriving Afghans, but campaigners immediately expressed concerns about the accommodation many will be offered.

As a new position – a minister for Afghan resettlement – was announced, doctors also warned that healthcare provision would have to be improved if, as expected, many of the arrivals are housed in hotels for at least the first few months.

The government also said it would be taking up the many offers of support that have flooded in from charities, businesses and members of the public. Critics warned that ministers must avoid relying on the goodwill of the British people to deliver vital support to the new arrivals.

Michael Savage and Mark Townsend report:

US has evacuated around 2,000 more people

US military and coalition flights took approximately 2,000 people from Kabul, Afghanistan, from 3am Eastern time to 3pm on Saturday, Reuters reports, citing a White House official.

Biden withdrawing US ambassador and all diplomatic staff by Tuesday

Biden plans to withdraw all US diplomatic staff, including the ambassador, by Tuesday the Washington Post reports. It remains unclear whether or when they might return, the Post reports, citing two US officials:

Despite the Taliban’s expressed interest in having the United States maintain a diplomatic mission in Kabul, the Biden administration has not made a final decision about what a future presence might look like. On Friday, State Department spokesman Ned Price said the Biden administration is “actively discussing” the Taliban’s request with US allies and partners in the region – but the United States has not yet engaged directly with the Taliban to discuss what form a diplomatic mission might take, according to one US official who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive policy deliberations.

The lack of a set plan all but ensures that the United States’ diplomatic presence in Kabul will lapse for weeks, months or even longer — potentially complicating the Biden administration’s ability to make good on recent assurances that although the US military is departing the country by 31 August, the United States will continue to help Americans and Afghans who want to leave after they are gone.

Remaining British troops leave Kabul on final UK military flight

Two decades of engagement in Afghanistan by British troops has come to an end as the final members of UK military and diplomatic personnel left Kabul airport on Saturday night, ending the largest evacuation mission since the second world war.

Operation Pitting – where more than 1,000 troops, diplomats, and officials were dispatched to Afghanistan to rescue UK nationals and Afghan allies after the seizure of the country’s capital by the Taliban – airlifted more than 15,000 people to safety across just over a fortnight.

British prime minister Boris Johnson said now was “a moment to reflect on everything we have sacrificed and everything we have achieved in the last two decades”.

Updated

Terror attack ‘highly likely in next 24-36 hours’, says Biden

On Saturday afternoon in Washington, US President Joe Biden vowed to keep up airstrikes against the Islamic extremist group whose suicide bombing at the Kabul airport killed scores of Afghans and 13 American service members. Another terror attack, he said, is “highly likely” this weekend as the US winds down its evacuation.

AP: The Pentagon said the remaining contingent of US forces at the airport, now numbering fewer than 4,000, had begun their final withdrawal ahead of Biden’s deadline for ending the evacuation on Tuesday.

After getting briefed on a US drone mission in eastern Afghanistan that the Pentagon said killed two members of the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate early Saturday, Biden said the extremists can expect more.

“This strike was not the last,” Biden said in a statement. “We will continue to hunt down any person involved in that heinous attack and make them pay.”

The evacuation proceeded as tensions rose over the prospect of another IS attack.

“Our commanders informed me that an attack is highly likely in the next 24-36 hours,” Biden said, adding that he has instructed them to take all possible measures to protect their troops, who are securing the airport and helping bring onto the airfield Americans and others desperate to escape Taliban rule.

The remains of the 13 American troops killed in the attack were on their way to the United States, the Pentagon said.

Updated

Summary

Hi, I’m Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest developments from Afghanistan as they happen.

As always, if you see news you think we should know, you can get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan.

Here is a recap of the key news from the last while:

  • Two decades of engagement in Afghanistan by British troops has come to an end as the final members of UK military and diplomatic personnel left Kabul airport on Saturday night, brining a close to the largest evacuation mission since the second world war. Operation Pitting – where more than 1,000 troops, diplomats, and officials were dispatched to Afghanistan to rescue UK nationals and Afghan allies after the seizure of the country’s capital by the Taliban – airlifted more than 15,000 people to safety across just over a fortnight.
  • Joe Biden warned on Saturday that another terrorist attack in Kabul was highly likely in the next 24 to 36 hours, and said the US drone strike which killed two Islamic State targets in retaliation for the deaths of 13 US service members and as many as 170 civilians on Thursday would not be the last such action.
  • Musa Papal has been named by his family as a British victim of the Kabul airport suicide bombing. Papal, 60, left his home in North London in May to visit family in Kandahar and was killed in the airport blast. Another Briton killed in the Kabul attack was Mohammad Niazi, a 29-year-old taxi driver who died along with his wife and two of their children after he went to Afghanistan to rescue them, Sky News reports.
  • The Pentagon said the US has helped a total of 117,000 people evacuate from Afghanistan, including 6,800 in the past 24 hours.
  • France and Britain will submit a resolution to an emergency United Nations meeting due Monday on Afghanistan proposing a safe zone in Kabul to protect people trying to leave the country, French president Emmanuel Macron said.
  • The families of Afghan interpreters who have fled the Taliban to the UK will be offered free English courses as part of a comprehensive package to help them settle in their new home.
  • Thousands of emails to the Foreign Office from MPs and charities detailing urgent cases of Afghans trying to escape from Kabul have not been read, including cases flagged by government ministers, the Observer has been told.
  • The US Embassy in Kabul warned earlier that US citizens at the airport gates “should leave immediately”. The embassy also warned, citing security threats, that citizens should avoid traveling to the airport because of security threats.

Updated

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