Taliban reaches Kabul, awaits peaceful transfer of power

Meanwhile, the US has announced that evacuation of the embassy in Kabul has started.

Taliban fighters have entered the outskirts of the Afghan capital and said they were awaiting a “peaceful transfer” of the city after promising not to take it by force.

Meanwhile but panicked residents raced to the leave the capital, with workers fleeing government offices and helicopters landing at the US Embassy on Sunday.

In a nationwide offensive that has taken just over a week, the Taliban has defeated, co-opted or sent Afghan security forces fleeing from wide swaths of the country, even though they had some air support from the US military.

The collapse of Jalalabad, near a major border crossing with Pakistan, left Afghanistan’s central government in control of just Kabul and a few other provincial capitals out of the country’s 34. 

On Sunday, they reached Kabul.

Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen told TRT World that the insurgents wants a peaceful transfer of power and that they want to enter the capital city peacefully, where he announced a “general amnesty for all.”

Shaheen rejected reports of rights abuses by the insurgent militants calling them “baseless” and ” exaggerated” and said that any one found violating the group’s policy and law in this regard will be tried and prosecuted.

Three Afghan officials told The Associated Press that the Taliban were in the districts of Kalakan, Qarabagh and Paghman in the capital.

Later, Afghan forces at Bagram air base, home to a prison housing 5,000 inmates, surrendered to the Taliban, according to Bagram district chief Darwaish Raufi. The prison housed both Taliban and Islamic State group fighters.