Agencies :
At least three people have been reportedly killed and a dozen others wounded after shots fired at protest against removal of Afghan flag by Taliban in the eastern city of Jalalabad.
Al Jazeera’s Rob McBride, reporting from Kabul, said that “a fairly sizable part” of Jalalabad’s residents were resisting the replacement of Afghanistan’s national flag in the city by the Taliban banner.
“We have seen uploaded on social media, protests in the streets of hundreds if not thousands of people waving the national flag,” he said.
“We know that they have put the flag back up again in an important square in Jalalabad and that there have been clashes with the Taliban …”
Babrak Amirzada, a reporter for a local news agency, said he and a TV cameraman from another agency were beaten by the Taliban as they tried to cover the unrest, according to The Associated Press news agency.
The planes carrying hundreds of evacuees from Kabul have arrived in the United Kingdom and Germany as Western nations stepped up evacuation efforts and the
Taliban promised women’s rights, media freedom and amnesty for government officials in Afghanistan.
The United States said its military flights had evacuated 3,200 people from Kabul so far, including 1,100 on Tuesday alone.
In Kabul, the Taliban sought to strike a conciliatory tone at its first press conference since its lightning seizure of the Afghan capital, promising to respect the rights of women “within the framework of Islam” and expressing a desire for peaceful relations with other countries.
About 5,000 diplomats, security staff, aid workers and Afghans have been evacuated from the capital Kabul in the last 24 hours, a Western official told Reuters news agency.
The evacuations by military flights will continue around the clock, he said, adding that clearing the chaos outside the airport was a challenge.
Besides, the Netherlands has managed to get 35 of its citizens out of Afghanistan in a slow start to its evacuation operation amid chaos outside Kabul airport, Defence Minister Ank Bijleveld says.
The 35 Dutch were flown to Tbilisi in Georgia along with 16 Belgians, two Germans and two British citizens, Bijleveld said, on a Boeing C-17 plane operated jointly by NATO countries.
On the other hand, Al Jazeera’s Charlotte Bellis, reporting from Kabul, said that the anti-Taliban protests have expanded beyond Jalalabad to several other provinces.
“People are very upset that the national flag was taken down and that the Taliban flag has been raised,” said Bellis.
She added: “That isn’t the only flashpoint in Afghanistan today. There is ongoing chaos at the airport where the Taliban is still trying to hold people off from reaching the airport, breaching the security perimeter and having a repeat of what happened on Monday when thousands of people made their way onto the tarmac and disrupted evacuation flights.”
Reuters added: Seventeen people were injured on Wednesday in a stampede at a gate to the airport in the Afghan capital, Kabul, a NATO security official said, as Western countries stepped up the evacuation of their diplomats and others.
Afghan civilians seeking to leave after the Taliban seized the capital on Sunday had been told not to gather around the airport unless they had a passport and visa to travel, said the official, who was working at the airport.
The official, who declined to be identified, said he had not heard any reports of violence by Taliban fighters outside the airport.
More than 2,200 diplomats and other civilians have been evacuated from Afghanistan on military flights, a Western security official told Reuters on Wednesday, as efforts gathered pace to get people out after the Taliban seized the capital, reported Reuters.
The Taliban have said they want peace, will not take revenge against old enemies and would respect the rights of women within the framework of Islamic law. But thousands of Afghans, many of whom helped US-led foreign forces over two decades, are desperate to leave.
“We are continuing at a very fast momentum, logistics show no glitches as of now and we have been able to remove a little over 2,200 diplomatic staff, foreign security staff and Afghans who worked for embassies,” the Western security official said.
It was unclear when civilian flights would resume, he said.
The official did not give a breakdown of how many Afghans were among the more than 2,200 people to leave nor was it clear if that tally included more than 600 Afghan men, women and children who flew out on Sunday, crammed into a US military C-17 cargo aircraft.
The Taliban, fighting since their 2001 ouster to expel foreign forces, seized Kabul on Sunday after a lightning offensive as US-led Western withdrew under a deal that included a Taliban promise not to attack them as they leave.
US forces running the airport had to stop flights on Monday after thousands of frightened Afghans swamped the facility looking for a flight out. Flights resumed on Tuesday as the situation came under control.
As they consolidated power, the Taliban said one of their leaders and co-founders, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, had returned to Afghanistan for the first time in more than 10 years.
Baradar was arrested in Pakistan in 2010, but released from prison in 2018 at the request of former US President Donald Trump’s administration so he could participate in peace talks.
As he was returning, a Taliban spokesman held the movement’s first news briefing since their return to Kabul, suggesting they would impose their laws more softly than during their earlier time in power, between 1996-2001.
“We don’t want any internal or external enemies,” Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s main spokesman, told reporters. Women would be allowed to work and study and “will be very active in society but within the framework of Islam”, he said.
During their rule, also guided by sharia religious law, the Taliban stopped women from working. Girls were not allowed to go to school and women had to wear all-enveloping burqas to go out and then only when accompanied by a male relative.
Ramiz Alakbarov, UN humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan, told Reuters in an interview the Taliban had assured the United Nations it can pursue humanitarian work in Afghanistan, which is suffering from a severe drought.
The European Union said it would only cooperate with Taliban authorities if they respected fundamental rights, including those of women.
AFP reported: The White House has said the Taliban had promised that civilians could travel safely to the Kabul airport as the US military stepped up its airlift for Americans and Afghans fleeing the Islamist group.
Some 3,200 people have been evacuated by the US military so far, a White House official said, including 1,100 on Tuesday alone — US citizens, permanent residents and their families on 13 flights.
– Airport chaos –
Taylor spoke a day after security broke down at the airport, with videos showing hundreds of Afghans running next to a C-17, some clinging to it.
Videos appeared to show two people falling to their deaths from one aircraft after it took off. Another person was later found dead in a wheel well.
US Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said they were investigating the incidents.
“Before the air crew could offload the cargo, the aircraft was surrounded by hundreds of Afghan civilians,” she said.
“Faced with a rapidly deteriorating security situation around the aircraft, the C-17 crew decided to depart the airfield as quickly as possible.”
