Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund has been named as the interim prime minister of Afghanistan.

He served as governor of Kandahar province during the Taliban’s previous rule in the 1990s.

According to the AFP news agency, Akhund was a close aide to the Taliban’s co-founder Mullah Omar, who is currently on a UN blacklist.

He is thought to be in his 60s or potentially older.

A Taliban source told Reuters news agency that Akhund is highly respected within the movement.

Lyse Doucet
Chief International Correspondent

Image source, Getty Images

A movement which has long moved in the shadows, whose names would surface only on the world’s terrorism watch lists, is now announcing titles used in governments the world over.

Acting Prime Minister Mullah Akhund appears as a compromise candidate after reported rivalries among leading military and political figures who will serve under him. Its caretaker nature also provides breathing space as the Taliban move from guns to government.

It also underlines the Taliban view that a Taliban victory can only mean Taliban rule. Sources say they pushed back against calls for an “inclusive” government. They balked at including former political figures and officials, who’ve had their turn at the top, and especially those tainted by corruption.

“Why should we let others pick our cabinet when other countries pick their own?” was one retort.

As for women, there was never a chance they would be given a ministerial role; the Ministry of Women’s Affairs has, for now, been abolished altogether.

Image source, Getty Images

As the Taliban were finalising their list of government appointees, their fighters were firing warning shots to disperse hundreds of demonstrators in Kabul.

The crowds had gathered to denounce Taliban rule and the support many suspect they receive from Pakistan, as well as to demand women's rights.

When asked for a response, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said all demonstrations need the permission of the justice ministry and the police, and none can happen until the new government is in place.

"We have to accept that nowadays the country has come out of crisis. This is not the time for protest. There was no government yet. There are rules for protest,” he said.

"We know that there are some people behind it who want to fuel instability from outside the country. And they want to destabilise the city and bring chaos into the city. They worry people."

Announcing the new appointments, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid stressed that the government “is not complete, it is just acting… we will try to take people from other parts of the country”.

However, some observers have noticed that no women feature in the new line-up - and no Minister for Women's Affairs has been announced.

When asked by the BBC's Secunder Kermani why no women had been announced, Ahmadullah Wasiq, from the Taliban Cultural Commission, said the cabinet had not been finalised yet.

The Taliban interim government is stacked with high-profile members of the group.

However, the Taliban are yet to say whether any role in the government will be played by Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban leader.

He has not been seen or heard in public since the group re-took control of Afghanistan last month.

As the Taliban's supreme commander, Akhundzada is in charge of political, military and religious affairs.

Image source, Getty Images

Abdul Ghani Baradar, the government's new deputy leader, is one of the four men who founded the Taliban in Afghanistan in 1994.

He became a lynchpin of the insurgency after the Taliban were toppled by the US-led invasion in 2001. But he was captured in a joint US-Pakistani operation in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi in February 2010.

He remained in prison for eight years, until he was released as part of a plan to facilitate the peace process. He has been the head of the Taliban's political office in Qatar since January 2019.

In 2020, Baradar became the first Taliban leader to communicate directly with a US president after having a telephone conversation with Donald Trump. Before that, Baradar signed the Doha agreement on the withdrawal of US troops on behalf of the Taliban.

Read in full: Who's who in the Taliban leadership

Image source, Reuters

The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has denied reports that the Taliban have prevented several hundred people - including Americans - from flying out of an airport in northern Afghanistan.

Reports have emerged over the past several days that up to 1,000 people, including some US citizens, have been stuck at the airport in Mazar-i-Sharif for days awaiting clearance for their flights to depart.

Speaking in Qatar, Blinken said the US was not aware of anyone being held on an aircraft in Mazar-i-Sharif or in any hostage-like situation, as he put it.

He said the militants had assured Washington that they would allow those with the right documents to be evacuated from Afghanistan.

However, he did accept that some people who lacked the necessary travel documentation had been prevented from departing.

"It's my understanding that the Taliban has not denied exit to anyone holding a valid document, but they have said those without valid documents, at this point, can't leave," Blinken said.

It follows complaints by some non-governmental organisations and opposition Republican lawmakers in the US that the Biden administration was not doing enough to help people leave the country.

The Taliban have announced their new interim government for Afghanistan.

Here are the roles that have been announced so far:

• Mullah Mohammad Hasan Akhund, an associate of the movement's late founder Mullah Omar, is to lead the government as acting prime minister
• Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar will be deputy leader
• Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, who has overseen the group's military operations in Afghanistan, has been named defence minister
• Sarajuddin Haqqani, son of the founder of the Haqqani network - designated as a terrorist organisation by the United States - will be the new interior minister
• Abas Stanikzai will be deputy foreign minister

We'll have more on the Taliban's announcement of an interim government shortly.

Meanwhile, as we've been reporting, the Taliban have fired warning shots to disperse the crowd at a large protest in Kabul.

Video footage from the scene shows people running to safety, while heavy gunfire can be heard in the background.

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets on Tuesday to denounce Taliban rule and demand women's rights.

You can read our latest report on the Kabul protest here.

Welcome back to our live coverage of the situation in Afghanistan.

The Taliban have just announced they are forming an interim government and named Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund as acting prime minister.

A number of other appointments have also been confirmed such as the prime minister’s deputies and foreign minister.

The Taliban took control of the country more than three weeks ago. The announcement of the acting cabinet is a key step in the formation of a Taliban government.

Earlier today the group fired warning shots in Kabul to disperse hundreds of protesters, many of them women.

We’ll be bringing you all the latest developments from the country.

We're now pausing our live coverage of Afghanistan. Here's a reminder of Monday's main developments

• The Taliban claim to have seized control of the Panjshir Valley - the final area of resistance to their rule
• Earlier on Monday, the group posted a video showing its members raising the Taliban flag outside the provincial governor’s office there
• But in an audio message, resistance leader Ahmad Massoud said his fighters were still present in the valley and called for Afghans to rise up against the Taliban
• Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the important decisions in the formation of a new government have been made and that the line-up would be announced soon
• In the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif women have taken to the streets calling for the Taliban to protect the rights of women
• UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has told MPs that more than 300 people eligible for relocation to the UK remain in Afghanistan
• A US official has revealed that four US citizens have left Afghanistan - the first evacuations since the country ended its military presence in the country last month
• And witnesses have told the BBC that Taliban militants killed a pregnant policewoman in Afghanistan's central Ghor province over the weekend

Reality Check

Responding to the PM’s statement on Afghanistan, opposition leader Keir Starmer said: “Only 2,000 of the 8,000 eligible for the ARAP scheme had been brought to Britain [before the fall of Kabul].”

The Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) offers priority relocation to people in Afghanistan who had been employed by the UK and whose lives were under serious threat.

The programme was launched on 1 April.

By the time Kabul had fallen to the Taliban on 15 August only around 2,000 people had been relocated to the UK via the scheme.

Up until the end of the month, the Ministry of Defence said a further 8,000 had been evacuated from the country.

So around 10,000 ARAP claimants in total have been relocated.

BBC Reality Check has taken a closer look at how many people have been moved to the UK from Afghanistan.

Rajini Vaidyanathan
BBC South Asia Correspondent

Helmand Province in the south, where British troops were stationed during the conflict, was seized by the Taliban on 13 August. The provincial capital Lashkar Gah saw some of the heaviest fighting in the weeks preceding.

Image source, Getty Images

Pinned to the noticeboard of Dr Viktor Urosevic's office are small plastic bags containing bullets. "We call it our wall of shame," he said, as he removed one to hold up to the camera in a video interview.

Most of them were large calibre rounds which he had removed from young patients, he said.

Dr Urosevic works at a trauma hospital in Lashkar Gah. Now that the fighting has ended, the wards are no longer packed like they were just weeks ago. The bombs and bullets have stopped and the streets outside are calm.

"It's very strange, I've been here for a few years, but it's never been so quiet," he said. "I'm seeing it as the silence before the storm, I hope I'm wrong, but let's see."

Many buildings were damaged or destroyed in bombings in Lashkar Gah and families who fled during the conflict have come back to find their homes in ruins, Dr Urosevic said.

He said a lot of families in the area were living in poverty, struggling to get a meal during the day. With banks closed for many days, a lack of access to cash has exacerbated the problem.

Many foreign aid workers who would be distributing this kind of aid left the country as the Taliban took charge. Dr Urosevic, from Serbia, is among those who decided to stay behind.

"We have a responsibility, we are the only trauma centre in the province," he said. "People need food, they need money, they need medicines."

Read more stories from Afghanistan here

Image source, Reuters

In early May, as US and Nato forces began their final withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban stepped up their military offensive against Afghan national security forces.

But they also did something less common in the group's history of conflict in Afghanistan - they launched a comprehensive social media campaign to go with it.

A network of social media accounts highlighted the alleged failures of the Kabul government while lauding the Taliban's achievements.

The coordination suggested the Taliban had moved on from their staunch opposition to modern information technology and media once associated with them, and built a social media apparatus to amplify their message.

In 2005, the official website of Islamic Emirates of Taliban, 'Al-Emarah', was launched and now publishes content in five languages - English, Arabic, Pashto, Dari, and Urdu.

The group also publishes freely on Twitter and YouTube.

Spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid's first Twitter account was suspended by the company, but his new account - active since 2017 - has more than 371,000 followers.

Read more about the Taliban's approach to social media here.

Police in southern Germany have launched investigations into three people who are suspected of smuggling Afghan nationals into the country.

Police said the 14 Afghans - who had arrived in Italy on military evacuation flights from Kabul just weeks earlier - were caught after illegally entering Germany. All had applied for asylum in Italy but did not want to remain there.

In the first case, an Irish national was found to be driving an Afghan family into the country. He was later released by police, but the two Afghan parents were reported for illegally entering Germany and taken with their two children to a refugee reception centre.

In a separate incident, police stopped a coach carrying 10 Afghans who had also recently arrived in Italy. They were accompanied by an Afghan holding a German refugee passport and an Afghan-born German national - both of whom were reported on suspicion of people smuggling. The 10 Afghans were also reported for illegally entering the country.

Rajini Vaidyanathan
BBC South Asia Correspondent

One of Afghanistan's poorest provinces, Badakhshan, in the northeast of the country, borders Tajikistan. The Taliban took control of its provincial capital on 11 August.

Image source, Getty Images

Abdul* is a doctor in Badakhshan. He was a student the last time the Taliban ran the country.

"The situation at that time was very bad and their behaviour is the same as they were in the past," he said. "I don't see any changes."

Abdul sent the BBC several pictures from a hospital in the area which is now guarded by the Taliban. In one, an 18-month-old boy lies emaciated on a bed, as his mother begs for staff to save him. According to Abdul, she could not afford to feed him.

"Day by day, more children are becoming malnourished," he said.

According to the UN, more than half of the children under five in Afghanistan are expected to be acutely malnourished in the next year. Poverty was already a reality for many in this province, but food and fuel prices have risen since the Taliban took charge and government employees have lost their jobs. Some are still waiting to be paid for the last few months.

Abdul also fears for women's rights in the province. While female medical staff have been allowed to work, he said many other women weren't being allowed to continue with their jobs and were left wondering what lies ahead.

Girls above Class 6 - above UK secondary school age - were no longer being allowed to go to school, Abdul said.

"People don't have any hope for their future," he said. "There is no opportunity for people in Badakhshan."

Read more stories from Afghanistan here

* Some names have been changed to protect contributors' safety.

Reality Check

While being questioned in parliament about the situation in Afghanistan, Boris Johnson responded to questions from the leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer, by saying: "As far as I can remember he didn't even bother to turn up to the first of the three statements I've given on Afghanistan in this house, this year."

The first of the prime minister's statements was on 8 July when he confirmed that all British troops would be returning home.

Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner spoke on that day saying: "May I give my apologies on behalf of the leader of the opposition, who is on a long-planned visit to meet political leaders in Northern Ireland?"

Sir Keir Starmer was in Parliament to respond to the second statement on 18 August.

A US official has revealed that four US citizens have left Afghanistan - the first evacuations since the country ended its military presence in the country last month.

A senior official travelling with Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Qatar on Monday told reporters during the flight that the four left the country by land and were greeted by US diplomats.

The Taliban knew about the evacuation, the official said, without saying which country the group crossed into.

US forces helped evacuate thousands through Kabul international airport last month. The final flight left the city on 31 August.

Taking you back to Westminster for a moment, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been asked how many Afghan nationals remain in the country who qualify for evacuation to the UK.

Mr Johnson said 311 candidates remained in Afghanistan, of which "192 responded to the calls that were put out".

He pledged to do "absolutely everything we can to ensure that those people get the safe passage that they deserve".

The Scottish National Party's Ian Blackford had asked the question - Mr Blackford also criticised the performance of the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, telling Mr Johnson that "he should have been sacked weeks ago".

Mr Raab has been widely criticised for choosing to remain on holiday while the Afghan government collapsed.

We'll step away from the UK parliament for now too look at some more analysis on the situation in the Panjshir Valley.

The Times' war correspondent Anthony Loyd has told the BBC that the final holdout against Taliban rule in the valley has effectively fallen.

Mr Loyd, who has been following Taliban fighters as they advanced into the Valley, told the BBC's World at One programme that while the militants didn't have 100% control, with some resistance fighters remaining in more mountainous regions, it appears that "the back of the resistance against them is broken".

He added that despite calls for a "national uprising" from the resistance leader Ahmad Massoud, he did not expect further challenges against Taliban rule to emerge.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a civil war and I don’t think there’s going to be a national uprising against the Taliban. I think we’re dealing with a shocked and exhausted country who might not necessarily like Taliban's rise to power but who are not going to pick up arms at this stage."

With the defeat of the final resistance to their rule, Mr Loyd said that he expected the Taliban to announce the formation of their government in the coming days.

The leader of the UK opposition, Keir Starmer, has now begun speaking.

He has criticised the government's "lack of leadership", saying that in the 18 months between the Doha agreement for the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the fall of Kabul, only 2,000 of the 8,000 eligible Afghans were brought to the UK.

Safe passage for those who remain has not been guaranteed, he said, adding that Johnson only convened a meeting of the G7 after Kabul fell.

The prime minister responded by praising the UK armed forces, saying that the military had managed to extract almost double the number of people it had planned to.