Celebratory gunfire erupted in Kabul on Friday night as rumours circulated that the Taliban had captured the Panjshir Valley, a last holdout against the Taliban sweep. Heavy clashes have been reported in recent days between the Taliban and the Panjshir Valley-based National Resistance Forces (NRF), headed by former vice president …

A close senior aide to Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden has returned to Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan two weeks after the Taliban seized control of the country. A video verified by the The National shows Amin ul-Haq being driven through a checkpoint in the passenger seat of a …

The calamitous scenes at Kabul’s airport, where thousands of people are scrambling to escape the Taliban before an August 31 deadline, prove the US is not concerned with the fate of ordinary Afghans, Islamist leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar told The National. With days before the US ends its 20-year presence in …