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At least two people were killed in Asadabad city when the Taliban opened fire following a stabbing attempt.
At least two people have been killed after the Taliban opened fire at a crowd celebrating independence day in Asadabad, witnesses said.
In Jalalabad, Taliban fighters fired at people waving the Afghan flag during independence day celebrations, injuring a man and a teenage boy.
Charlotte Bellis, reporting from Kabul, said: “There were some isolated protests linked to the flag in Kabul as well, with people, including women, walking down the streets past Taliban fighters waving the old flag and saying: ‘Our flag is our identity.’”
Meanwhile, evacuations are continuing from Kabul’s airport.
US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday he will keep soldiers in Afghanistan until every American is evacuated, even if that means going beyond his August 31 deadline.
Here are some of the latest updates:
UN, aid groups appeal for Afghanistan funding
The heads of UN agencies and international aid groups have made an appeal for more humanitarian funding for Afghanistan as they pledged to stay and deliver, warning that they were at least $800 million short of what was needed.
“We will stay in Afghanistan and we will deliver,” the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), made up of the heads of at least 18 U.N. agencies and international aid groups, said in a statement.
“This is not the time to abandon the Afghan people.”
At the start of the year, half of Afghanistan’s population – more than 18 million people – needed help, they said. A U.N. appeal for $1.3 billion to reach 16 million people this year with humanitarian aid is only 37 percent funded.
“Those needs have risen sharply because of conflict, drought, and COVID-19,” they said.
Some 1,500 Afghan refugees in Uzbekistan: embassy
About 1,500 Afghans fleeing the Taliban have crossed into neighbouring Uzbekistan where some are currently living in tents near the border, an Afghan embassy staffer in the Central Asian country told AFP news agency.
The embassy representative could not provide details of where the refugees were being housed and how they reached the country, citing security concerns.
He said the refugees are currently “in the Surkhandarya region near the (border) city of Termez and in Termez itself.”
Protests is Greece to push for more evacuations
Hundreds of people, many Afghan migrants, gathered in the Greece capital Athens to push the government to do more for Afghans including those seeking asylum.
“The key demand by the protesters … many of them asylum seekers, is for the government to speed up the process of approval of Afghan asylum applications, but also to facilitate the exit, and the transfer of asylum applicants who are still in Afghanistan, and who wish to come to Europe,” John Psaropoulos reported from Athens.
“They’re extremely worried about their relatives back home,” he added.
"#Afghanistan wants to live" chant Afghans in Athens during a protest against the #Taliban. They are asking for Europe to facilitate the exit of asylum seekers from the country, and to approve applications. pic.twitter.com/urAW5iwUht
— John T Psaropoulos (@JTPsaropoulos) August 19, 2021
UNESCO urges Afghan cultural protection
The UN cultural agency called for the protection of Afghanistan’s cultural heritage and to ensure a safe environment for artists, days after the Taliban swept to power in Kabul.
Afghanistan is home to two UNESCO World Heritage sites, including the Bamiyan Valley, where the Taliban blew up two giant Buddha statues before the Islamist group was ousted from power in 2001.
“Amid the rapidly unfolding events, and 20 years after the deliberate destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, a World Heritage site, UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay calls for the preservation of Afghanistan’s cultural heritage,” UNESCO said in a statement on Thursday.
Afghanistan’s fate means West now perceived as weak, UK minister says
The fate of Afghanistan after a 20-year war led by the United States means that the West’s resolve is now perceived as weak by major adversaries such as Russia, British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said.
Afghanistan’s war has cost several hundred thousand lives and trillions of dollars but the militant Islamist Taliban are now back in power, and the West’s leading powers are scrambling to evacuate their diplomats and Afghan staff from Kabul airport.
“What I’m uncomfortable with is that we have a world order now where resolve is perceived by our adversaries as weak, the West’s resolve,” Wallace told BBC TV.
Taliban face ‘existential’ choice on international recognition: Biden
The Taliban face an “existential” choice about how they are seen by the rest of the world after their sweeping military victory in Afghanistan, US President Joe Biden said.
“I think they’re going through sort of an existential crisis about do they want to be recognized by the international community as being a legitimate government,” Biden told ABC News.
The US president who defended the chaotic exit of the final US troops, foreigners and Afghan allies after the Taliban victory, said he was “not counting” on the Taliban to shift their priorities.
Biden: ‘Military force’ not the way to protect women’s rights
US President Joe Biden says in an interview that war is not the answer to growing fears for the human rights of women in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover.
“The idea that we’re able to deal with the rights of women around the world by military force is not rational,” Biden said in the ABC News interview, his first since the Taliban victory triggered a frantic final US withdrawal.
“There are a lot of places where women are being subjugated,” he said. “The way to deal with that is putting economic, diplomatic and international pressure on them to change their behaviour.”
Afghanistan war unpopular amid chaotic pullout: Poll
A significant majority of Americans doubt that the war in Afghanistan was worthwhile, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Roughly two-thirds said they did not think America’s longest war was worth fighting, the poll shows. It was conducted August 12-16.
