Daily US Times: Two hundred US citizens and other foreigners who remain in Afghanistan were expected to depart the country on charter flights from the capital Kabul on Thursday after the new Taliban government agreed to their evacuation.
The departures will be among the first international flights to take off from Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport since the end of the chaotic US-led evacuation of 124,000 foreigners and at-risk Afghans.
This comes amid mounting concern over the rapidly deteriorating human rights situation in Afghanistan under the Taliban rule, including women’s rights and freedom of expression.
With the Taliban moving to ban demonstrations after the militia group appointment of a new interim cabinet, journalists in the country described on Thursday being beaten and detained after covering protests.
Among them were two reporters who were left with bruises and welts after being detained and beaten for hours by Taliban enforcers for covering a protest in Kabul on Wednesday.
The journalists were taken to a police station in Kabul, where they say they were punched and beaten with electrical cables, batons and whips after being accused of organising the protest.
Nematullah Naqdi, a photogapher, said: “One of the Taliban put his foot on my head, crushed my face against the concrete. They kicked me in the head … I thought they were going to kill me.”
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