Kabul: Thousands of people are besieging the entrances to Kabul's airport, the main lifeline for Afghans and foreign citizens trying to flee the country as the Taliban take over.
Shots continued to be fired almost continuously outside the heavily armed airport compound, a witness at the scene said.
In the days since the Taliban took control of the Afghan capital and the country on August 15, thousands of people have been airlifted out of Afghanistan from the airport, the only part of the capital controlled by international troops.
Many desperate Afghans who have either worked with international troops during the past two decades or who work in areas such as human rights are fearing for their lives, with many trying to get themselves or family members inside the airport.
A report compiled for the United Nations warned that the Taliban is conducting targeted searches for supposed collaborators with the ousted government, despite assurances by the radical group that it would not carry out reprisals.
There have been repeated armed confrontations at the gates to the airport compound. The US military decides on when and how to open and close the gates, and the timing is not predictable.
Loudspeaker announcements at the northern entrance said the gate would now be closed for two days, the witness said.
A second witness said that people from all walks of life were outside the airport: actors, TV personalities, young people, women with newborn babies or people in wheelchairs among many others.
Images of a baby being handed to troops over the compound wall went viral on Friday. A soldier grabbed the baby by the right arm and handed it to colleagues.
The Afghan Civil Aviation Authority issued a statement on Saturday asking people not to travel to the airport. "There [are] no civilian and commercial flights in Hamid Karzai International Airport," it advised via Facebook.
The US embassy also called on US citizens to avoid the airport unless instructed otherwise by a US government representative because of "potential security threats outside the gates", in a security alert issued on Saturday.
Only two days prior, the embassy had asked US citizens to travel to the airport "when you judge it is safe to do so."
US President Joe Biden has assured US citizens and Afghans who worked with the Americans that they will brought home, but there are many thousands still in the country.
Troops from many other countries, including Germany, Britain and Turkey, are carrying out simultaneous evacuation operations from the airport.
The small EU member state of Luxembourg has also joined evacuation efforts, with the country's only military aircraft awaiting a Belgian plane evacuating people from Afghanistan at the airport in Islamabad, the Defence Ministry said on Saturday.
The A400M military plane is set to fly six Luxembourg nationals and other Europeans to the military airport in Brussels, it said.
Meanwhile, the deputy head of the Taliban, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, arrived in Kabul on Saturday, sources said.
Baradar, in charge of the Taliban's political office in Doha, will conduct talks with Taliban members and other politicians on the formation of a new government, they said.
Baradar is the highest-ranking representative of the group known to have arrived in Afghanistan so far, and is tipped by intelligence sources to be given a post similar to that of prime minister. -- dpa
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