Desperation in Kabul as Afghans struggle to escape

KABUL • Desperation deepened around Kabul's airport with evacuation operations in chaos and United States President Joe Biden warning he could not predict the outcome of one of the "most difficult airlifts in history".

Six days after the Taleban took back power in Afghanistan, the flow of people trying to flee a feared hardline Islamist rule continued to overwhelm the international community.

Traffic, people and checkpoints choked roads to the airport. Families hoping for a miraculous escape crowded within the barbed-wire surrounds of an unofficial no-man's land separating the Taleban from US troops and remnants of an Afghan special forces brigade helping them.

A video of a US soldier lifting a baby over a wall at Kabul's airport offered the latest tragic imagery of the utter despair, following horror footage of people hanging on to the outside of departing planes.

"Please, please, please help me... Where should I go, what should I do," one man, who said he worked for the US Embassy in the mid-2000s, wrote in a WhatsApp chat set up for people to share information on how to get out.

"I have tried to get there (the airport) for some days, but I cannot reach it. Please save me."

Thousands of US soldiers are at the airport trying to shepherd foreigners and Afghans onto flights, but Mr Biden admitted the troops' presence offered no guarantees of safe passage.

"This is one of the largest, most difficult airlifts in history," he said in a televised address on Friday. "I cannot promise what the final outcome will be."

US military helicopters were deployed to rescue more than 150 Americans unable to reach the airport on Friday morning, an official in Washington said.

It was the first report of US forces going beyond the airport to help people seeking evacuation.

A German civilian was shot and wounded on his way to the airport, a government spokesman in Berlin said.

Mr Biden had set a deadline of Aug 31 to completely withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan, but he flagged that this could be extended to continue the airlifts.

"We're going to make that judgment as we go," he said.

About 13,000 people have left on American military aircraft, the White House said. Thousands of others have fled on other foreign military flights.

The crisis has cast another shadow over the US' status as a global superpower and its ability to help allies around the world.

The Taleban swept into the capital last week, ending two decades of war after Mr Biden pulled nearly all US troops out of the country.

The US and its allies admitted they were surprised at how quickly the Taleban was able to rout government forces, most of whom surrendered.

The Taleban has promised a "positively different" form of rule from its 1996 to 2001 stint in power, which was infamous for an ultra-fundamentalist interpretation of syariah law.

Women were excluded from public life, girls banned from school and people stoned to death for adultery.

The militants have also vowed not to seek revenge against their opponents, promising a general amnesty for anyone who worked with the US-backed government.

But an intelligence document for the United Nations said militants were going door to door, hunting down former government officials and those who worked with US and Nato forces.

According to the confidential document by the UN's threat-assessment consultants, militants were also screening people on the way to Kabul airport.

German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported that the Taleban had shot dead a relative of one of its journalists while searching for the editor.

At the first Friday prayers since the Taleban's return to power, imams and guest speakers celebrated the defeat of the US.

At one mosque in Kabul, gunmen flanked a scholar as he delivered a fiery speech in which he recounted how Afghans had beaten the British Empire, the Soviet Union and now the US on the battlefield.

"Afghans have once again shown collective pride," he said.

At another mosque, the imam referenced the tragic scenes at the airport, describing those trying to flee as not having strong enough religious convictions.

"Those with weak faith are running after or hanging from American planes," he said. "They should stay and build their country."

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE