PICTURED: 640 Afghan refugees who ran onto US evacuation jet in Kabul

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The first photos have emerged of US cargo jets packed with hundreds of terrified Afghan refugees after they rushed the ramps before military personnel could close them in a desperate bid to flee the Taliban.

The US has so far flown at least two C-17 cargo jets out of Kabul and more flights are expected later this week despite chaos on the ground on Monday which left eight people dead, including desperate stowaways who fell from the sky in harrowing scenes.

A photo obtained by Defense One shows one of those jets filled with 640 Afghans, sitting on the floor of the plane that is fitted to carry 150 soldiers comfortably, but can take 171,000lbs of cargo. 

The refugees – including many women and young children – ran onto the plane’s half-open ramp before take-off and ‘the crew made the decision to go’, taking them with them, an unnamed defense official said. 

Joe Biden delivered a speech of quiet fury at the White House last night, defending his decision to bring home U.S. troops before blaming Afghan leaders for their failure to prevent the country collapsing. 

‘I stand squarely behind my decision,’ the President said. ‘After 20 years I’ve learned the hard way. That there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces. That’s why we’re still there.’ 

The speech came on a day that brought some of the most disturbing images so far of the confusion and disorder in Kabul. 

A video showed desperate Afghans clinging to the sides of a U.S. military plane as it tried to leave the city’s airport. Another showed people plunging to their deaths from a C-17 transport aircraft.

Around 2,500 U.S. troops have deployed to Kabul to help secure the evacuation of more people and around 3,500 were expected to have arrived by Tuesday.  

Biden admitted missteps during the past two decades and described the chaos at Kabul airport, where throngs of Afghans are still hoping to escape, as ‘gut wrenching.’ 

The President beat a hasty retreat to Camp David after the 18-minute speech, which came amid ferocious headlines from all sides of the media at his decision to plow ahead with the withdrawal from Afghanistan despite grave warnings that the country will once again become a terrorist hotbed. 

Later, Biden authorized a $500million emergency fund to meet ‘unexpected urgent’ refugee needs stemming from the situation in Afghanistan, including for Afghan special immigration visa applicants, the White House said.

The U.S. is said to be preparing to begin evacuating thousands of Afghan applicants for special immigration visas (SIVs) who risk retaliation from Taliban insurgents because they worked for the U.S. government. 

Last night during his speech, Biden declared: ‘I am president of the United States of America. And the buck stops with me.’

But only up to a point. He said the blame for such a rapid disintegration lay not with him, but his predecessor as president and Afghanistan’s leaders.

‘The truth is – this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated,’ he said, his eyes narrow.

‘So what’s happened? Afghanistan’s political leaders gave up and fled the country.

‘The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight.’

He delivered his speech on a day that brought some of the most disturbing images so far of the confusion and disorder in Kabul.

A video showed desperate Afghans clinging to the sides of a U.S. military plane as it tried to leave the city’s airport. Another showed people plunging to their deaths from a C-17 transport aircraft.

Major General Hank Taylor said at a press conference on Monday afternoon that US forced are ‘actively monitoring’ the situation. 

‘We have approximately 2,500 troops who have moved into Kabul. By the end of the day, we expect nearly 3,000 to 3,500 troops on the ground,’ he said. 

One C-17 flew out of Kabul on Monday that was carrying US Marines, he said. Another is in the air currently and is scheduled to land shortly. 

One – plane number RCH 885 – flew out of Kabul with desperate Afghan nationals clinging on to the fuselage on Monday. Three fell to their deaths. 

Pentagon Spokesperson John Kirby said the situation at the airport wasn’t a ‘failure’ despite thousands of Afghans flooding the airfield and US troops shooting dead two armed Afghan nationals. 

‘When you look at the images out of Kabul… that would have been difficult for anyone to predict,’ he said. 

In his remarks, Biden insisted the rapid collapse of the country only reinforced his belief that bringing troops home was the right thing to do.

‘American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves,’ he said.

Biden also pointed a finger at former President Donald Trump’s agreement with the Taliban to pull out American troops by May 1, 2021.

‘So I’m left again to ask of those who argue that we should stay: How many more generations of America’s daughters and sons would you have me send to fight Afghanistan’s civil war, when Afghan troops will not?’ Biden said.

‘How many more lives, American lives is it worth? How many endless rows of head stones at Arlington National Cemetery?’

‘I’m clear in my answer: I will not repeat the mistakes we’ve made in the past. The mistake of staying and fighting indefinitely in a conflict that is not in the national interest of the United States,’ he continued.

‘Of doubling down on a civil war in a foreign country. Of attempting to remake a country through the endless military deployments of U.S. forces,’ the president added.

His speech lasted about 18 minutes. At its conclusion, he walked out of the East Room, ignoring reporters’ shouted questions.

Twenty minutes later his motorcade left for Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., where Marine One was waiting to take him back to Camp David.

Biden’s speech repeated many of the talking points already circulated by White House officials, who asked the simple question: If not now, when?

But critics said he did nothing to address the sense that the U.S. withdrawal was hasty and ill-planned.

Former President Trump hit back at Biden.

‘It’s not that we left Afghanistan,’ he said in an emailed statement. ‘It’s the grossly incompetent way we left!’

Vandenberg Coalition chairman and former senior State Department official Elliott Abrams said it was a ‘disgraceful performance.’

He added: ‘The president never addressed the real questions: why would he not leave a few thousand troops to provide air power?

‘Why did he not understand that his decisions would create chaos?’

Jim Carafano, of the conservative Heritage Foundation, said: ‘It is unconscionable that the Biden administration accelerated this withdrawal without having plans in place to get all American citizens and allied Afghan partners who assisted American forces out of the country first.

‘It is shocking that there was no contingency planning in place to respond to the worst-case scenario.’

Biden was originally supposed to stay at Camp David until Wednesday as part of an August vacation.

Only last month, Biden had shrugged off concerns that the Taliban were poised to return to power, saying the Afghan military had the advantage in men and arms

‘The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely,’ he said.

The past week has proved him wrong and plunged his presidency into crisis.

At least eight people were killed during chaos at the Kabul airport on Monday, as thousands of Afghans traveled to the airfield in hopes of escaping the Taliban.

Two of those killed were armed Afghans shot dead by US troops.

Another three were run over by taxiing jets. An additional three were stowaways who fell from the engines of a US Air Force jet as it took off.

Meanwhile, Taliban fighters are going door to door to find Afghan special forces who fought alongside the U.S., Fox News reported. 

A day earlier President Ashraf Ghani flew out of the country.

He has been widely condemned for how he has withdrawn the US’s support after 20 years of helping Afghan forces stabilize the region. 

Biden briefly interrupted his vacation from Camp David on Monday to give a short address to the nation about the ongoing catastrophe in Kabul. 

‘We gave them every chance but we couldn’t provide them with the will to fight,’ he said.   

At least eight people were killed at Kabul airport on Monday, including two who were shot dead by US troops, three who were run over by taxiing jets and three stowaways who fell from the engines of a US Air Force plane as it fled an airfield of thousands of desperate Afghan nationals. 

The Taliban has taken control of Afghanistan and are going door to door in Kabul looking for enemies to kill  despite promising the international community they wouldn’t breach human rights because they wanted to be formally recognized. 

At Hamid Karzai International Airport, there was a stampede of thousands of people – both stranded foreign nationals and Afghan civilians – desperately trying to escape.   

The airport is the last place in the city that is being guarded by NATO troops. Thousands of Afghan nationals have rushed there in the hopes of being saved along with the foreigners being flown out, but the chaotic rescue operation collapsed on Monday as troops struggled to control the crowds.  

General Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr, the head of the Pentagon’s Central Command, met with Taliban representatives in Qatar on Sunday and convinced them to let the US evacuate its citizens and any interpreters and translators it plans to without interference.  

It remains unclear how NATO troops will organize the evacuation of Afghan refugees or even get themselves out given the diabolical situation that unfolded on Monday. 

There are believed to be 2,500 US troops at the airport with another 3,500 on the way but it’s unclear how many American civilians are there, and how many Afghan translators and interpreters are to be flown out.    

The harrowing scene at the airport on Monday included thousands rushing on to the runway as a US Air Force C-17 cargo jet took off with US citizens on board. 

Frantic Afghan nationals jumped onto the plane’s fuselage in the hope that it would carry them to safety. Shortly after it took off, three were filmed falling from the aircraft to their deaths. Three were run over and killed by the jet’s wheels on the tarmac. 

American troops halted evacuation flights for 90 minutes afterwards while they cleared the airfield, which had become overrun with thousands of Afghan nationals. They used apache helicopters and fired warning shots into the crowds to try to control them. 

Outside the walls of the airport, shots from Taliban fighters rang out. 

Afghanistan’s representative to the UN’s security council Ghulam M. Isaczai said ‘there are already reports of target killings and looting in the city,’ at a meeting of the council on Monday.

‘Kabul residents are reported that the Taliban have already started house-to-house searches in some neighborhoods, registering names and looking for people in their target list,’ he added.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was ‘particularly concerned’ by accounts of human rights violations against the women and girls of Afghanistan who fear a return to the darkest days’ in the 1990s when the Taliban ruled and barred girls for getting an education and imposed draconian measures on women. 

It’s unclear now who America will save from the chaos aside from US citizens and anyone who worked alongside them. 

Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan did a series of TV interviews on Monday where he said evacuation flights were ongoing, but he skirted criticism for the disaster and said: ‘When push came to shove, [the Afghan forces] decided not to step up and fight for their country.’  

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has also come under fire for hightailing out of the country last night, in a helicopter full of cash, according to the Russian embassy. His whereabouts remain unknown. 

The Taliban declared victory from the presidential palace on Sunday following a blistering advance across the country. Experts and lawmakers have for months warned the Biden administrations that this was exactly what would happen if they continued with the hasty retreat and entrusted the country to the Afghan National Army. 

One of the terror chieftains proclaimed from the palace, ‘Praise God, I was in Guantanamo for eight years’, as he sat at the president’s table surrounded by henchmen strapped with AK-47s. 

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that the U.S. decision to withdraw had ‘accelerated’ the crisis that risked creating ‘a breeding ground for terror.’

However, the Taliban has been on a charm offensive, pledging that no harm will come to any foreign citizens or embassy staff as it seeks formal recognition from the international community.  

Almost all major checkpoints in Kabul were under Taliban control by Monday morning and Afghanistan’s Civil Aviation Authority issued an advisory saying the ‘civilian side’ of the airport had been ‘closed until further notice’ and that the military controlled the airspace. 

Taliban officials said everyone would be allowed to return home from Kabul airport if they decide to stay in the country and promised civilians would not be harmed. The group previously said westerners would be allowed to leave the country but that Afghans would be barred from departing. 

US troops are guarding the airport and have taken over air traffic control, but all non-military flights are grounded. Early Monday morning, flight-tracking data showed no immediate commercial flights over the country. 

In the capital, a tense calm set in, with most people hiding in their homes as the Taliban deployed fighters at major intersections.

There were scattered reports of looting and armed men knocking on doors and gates, and there was less traffic than usual on eerily quiet streets. Fighters could be seen searching vehicles at one of the city’s main squares.

Many fear chaos, after the Taliban freed thousands of prisoners and the police simply melted away, or a return to the kind of brutal rule the Taliban imposed when it was last in power.

They raced to Kabul’s international airport, where the ‘civilian side’ was closed until further notice, according to Afghanistan’s Civil Aviation Authority. The military was put in control of the airspace.

Massouma Tajik, a 22-year-old data analyst, described scenes of panic at the airport, where she was hoping to board an evacuation flight.

After waiting six hours, she heard shots from outside, where a crowd of men and women were trying to climb aboard a plane. She said U.S. troops sprayed gas and fired into the air to disperse the crowds after people scaled the walls and swarmed onto the tarmac. Gunfire could be heard in the voice messages she sent to The Associated Press.

Shafi Arifi, who had a ticket to travel to Uzbekistan on Sunday, was unable to board her plane because it was packed with people who had raced across the tarmac and climbed aboard, with no police or airport staff in sight.

‘There was no room for us to stand,’ said the 24-year-old. ‘Children were crying, women were shouting, young and old men were so angry and upset, no one could hear each other. There was no oxygen to breathe.’

After another woman fainted and was carried off the plane, Arifi gave up and went back home. 

Meanwhile, refugees have been massing at the borders as people desperately try to flee Afghanistan before the Taliban’s brutal rules are implemented, with pictures from the country’s border with Pakistan showing hundreds of people queuing in an attempt to leave.

‘Today is a great day for the Afghan people and the mujahideen. They have witnessed the fruits of their efforts and their sacrifices for 20 years,’ Mohammad Naeem, the spokesman for the Taliban’s political office, told Al Jazeera TV. ‘Thanks to God, the war is over in the country.’

President Ghani fled the country on Sunday night as the insurgents encircled the capital – saying he wanted to avoid bloodshed – capping a military victory that saw them capture all cities in just 10 days.

In a Facebook post, Ghani said he had left the country to avoid clashes with the Taliban that would endanger millions of Kabul residents. Some social media users branded Ghani, who did not disclose his location, a coward for leaving them in chaos. Al Jazeera reported he had flown to Uzbekistan, citing his personal bodyguard.

‘The Taliban have won with the judgement of their swords and guns, and are now responsible for the honour, property and self-preservation of their countrymen,’ Ghani said after fleeing.

Taliban officials said they had received no reports of any clashes anywhere in the country: ‘The situation is peaceful,’ one official said. The Taliban controlled 90 percent of state buildings and fighters had been told to prevent any damage, the official added.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who fought in the Soviet-Afghan War during the 1980s and helped ex-chief Mohammad Omar create the Taliban in 1994, has already been installed as the head of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, according to reports in the Arab world.  

Video from Afghanistan’s parliament building showed Taliban fighters entering the main chamber today. The grainy footage showed fighters carrying weapons sitting at a table at the head of the chamber under the government’s seal, with some smiling and posing for photographs. 

Ghani fled from the country on Sunday as the Islamists entered Kabul virtually unopposed, saying he wanted to avoid bloodshed. 

Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen said in a message on Twitter their fighters were under strict orders not to harm anyone. 

‘Life, property and honour of none shall be harmed but must be protected by the mujahideen,’ he said.

Earlier, Mohammad Naeem, the spokesman for the Taliban’s political office, told Al Jazeera TV, the Afghan people and the Taliban had witnessed the fruits of their efforts and sacrifices over 20 years.

‘Thanks to God, the war is over,’ he said.

It took the Taliban just over a week to seize control of the country after a lightning sweep that ended in Kabul as government forces, trained for years and equipped by the United States and others at a cost of billions of dollars, melted away.

Al Jazeera broadcast footage of what it said were Taliban commanders in the presidential palace with dozens of armed fighters. 

Naeem said the form of the new regime in Afghanistan would be made clear soon, adding the Taliban did not want to live in isolation and calling for peaceful international relations.

The militants sought to project a more moderate face, promising to respect women’s rights and protect both foreigners and Afghans.

Many Afghans fear the Taliban will return to past harsh practices in their imposition of sharia religious law. During their rule, women could not work and punishments such as stoning, whipping and hanging were administered.

Both the United Nations and the United States said last week they had received reports that Taliban fighters were executing surrendering government soldiers.  

Taliban officials said they had received no reports of any clashes anywhere in the country: ‘The situation is peaceful,’ one said, adding the Taliban controlled 90% of state buildings and fighters had been told to prevent any damage.

Central Kabul streets were largely deserted early on a sunny Monday as waking residents pondered their future.

‘I’m in a complete state of shock,’ said Sherzad Karim Stanekzai, who spent the night in his carpet shop to guard it. ‘I know there will be no foreigners, no international people who will now come to Kabul.’

People thronged to the airport from late on Sunday with hundreds wandering on the runways in the dark, pulling luggage and jostling for a place on one of the last commercial flights to leave before U.S. forces took over air traffic control. 

Dozens of men tried to clamber onto an overhead departure gangway to board a plane while hundreds of others milled about, a video posted on social media showed.

U.S. forces gave up their big military base at Bagram, some 60 km north of Kabul, several weeks ago, leaving Kabul’s airport their only way out, to the anger of many Afghans.

‘The Americans have no right to hold the airport for their own use, they could have used their own base to take people out,’ said one person trying to leave.

There was the prospect of chaos in the skies over Afghanistan too. Its civil aviation authority advised transit aircraft to reroute saying its airspace was uncontrolled. 

The Pentagon on Sunday authorized another 1,000 troops to help evacuate U.S. citizens and Afghans who worked for them, expanding its security presence on the ground to almost 6,000 troops within the next 48 hours.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson said early on Monday that all embassy personnel, including Ambassador Ross Wilson, had been transferred to Kabul airport, mostly by helicopter, to await evacuation and the American flag had been lowered and removed from the embassy compound.

Western nations, including France, Germany and New Zealand said they were working to get citizens as well as some Afghan employees out.

In a Facebook post, Ghani said he had left the country to avoid clashes with the Taliban that would endanger millions of Kabul residents. Some social media users branded Ghani, who did not disclose his location, a coward for leaving them in chaos.

In Washington, opponents of President Joe Biden’s decision to end America’s longest war, launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said the chaos was caused by a failure of leadership.

Biden has faced rising domestic criticism after sticking to a plan, initiated by his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, to end the U.S. military mission by Aug. 31.

Britain’s defence minister said British and NATO forces would not be returning to fight the Taliban.

‘That’s not on the cards,’ Ben Wallace told Sky News. 

Taliban strengthens its grip on Afghanistan with gunmen patrolling streets of Kabul as militants claim civilians and foreigners have nothing to fear despite thousands trying to flee the country

By Chris Jewers 

Victorious Taliban fighters patrolled Kabul on Monday after a stunningly swift end to Afghanistan‘s 20-year war, as thousands of people mobbed the city’s airport trying to flee the group’s feared hardline brand of Islamist rule.

It took the Taliban just over a week to seize control of the country after a lightning sweep that ended in Kabul as government forces trained for years and equipped by Britain, the United States and other Western nations at a cost of billions of dollars, melted away.

As the militants declared victory and claimed peace had been brought to the country, at least five people were killed in Kabul airport and another three reportedly died falling from a plane, while hundreds tried to forcibly enter aircraft leaving the Afghan capital, witnesses said.

One witness said he had seen the bodies of five people being taken to a vehicle. Another witness said it was not clear whether the victims were killed by gunshots or in a stampede.

U.S. troops, who are in charge of the airport, earlier fired in the air to scatter the crowd, a U.S. official said, but officials were not immediately available to comment on the deaths.