Afghanistan has been renamed the ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’ by the Taliban after its fighters swept into the capital, Kabul, a bustling metropolis of six million that has turned into a male-dominated city without police or traffic controls.
It was reported that scores of Afghans ran alongside a US military plane as it taxied on the runway and several clung to the side as the jet took off with Senior US military officials confirming that the chaos left seven dead, as well as several who fell from the flight.
The Taliban, a militant group that ran the country in the late 1990s, have again taken control.
The US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 ousted the insurgents from power, but they never left.
After they blitzed across the country in recent days, the Western-backed government that has run the country for 20 years collapsed.
Hundreds of people reportedly poured onto the tarmac at Kabul’s international airport, desperately seeking a route out of Afghanistan on Monday after the Taliban’s sudden seizure of power sparked a chaotic Western withdrawal and brought to a crashing end the United States’ two-decade mission in the country.
Meanwhile, at a special session of the UN Security Council in New York, UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, urged Taliban to show “the utmost restraint to protect lives” and demanded that anyone who wanted to leave the country must be able to do so.
