Update: Defiant Taliban REFUSES to extend evacuation deadline despite secret talks with CIA boss: Regime issues chilling warning to westerners just minutes before G7 leaders plead with Biden to stay beyond August 31
Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said Tuesday they will not extend the August 31 deadline for all U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan – just 24 hours after Joe Biden sent his CIA director to negotiate with the militant group in a bid to get the remaining American citizens and Afghan allies out.
‘We will not extend the deadline for the presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan,’ Myjahid said in a Tuesday press conference. ‘They are capable of evacuating their citizens and troops by August 31.’
This could get very ugly. Given the US does not seem able to account for all Americans in Afghanistan you have to wonder if the Taliban have begun hostage taking.
Taliban ‘will not extend 31 August deadline’
Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid says he does not think that the 31 August deadline for evacuations from Kabul will be extended.
He adds there is enough time to get foreign nationals out before the deadline, and that the Taliban are “not in favour” of allowing Afghans to leave.
Afghans ‘no longer allowed to go to Kabul airport’
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid says the Taliban are no longer allowing Afghan nationals to go to Kabul airport because of the chaotic situation there.
At a news conference, he said crowds at the airport should go home and their security would be guaranteed.
But he said the US had kept on inviting people to the airport to board planes.
“We ask the Americans,” he said. “Don’t encourage Afghans to leave… We need their talent.”
He added that Afghan media outlets were now working again, as were hospitals, schools, university and local government.
