Shumaila Jaffery
BBC News

I'm at the Spin Boldak crossing on Afghanistan's border with Pakistan. This is usually one of the busiest points on the border, but today there are thousands of people attempting to cross.

Some refugees told us that they were leaving because business was bad, some said they were students who were worried about their education under the Taliban.

But many, particularly those from the Northern district, said they were fleeing because feared for their lives.

Many people here have relatives, friends and family in Pakistan. Some also have their own homes in the country. If they can cross, they will disperse to different cities.

We also met a son of an ex-Afghan soldier, who told us that despite the Taliban’s promises of an amnesty, he felt he couldn’t risk staying.

Some refugees from the minority Hazara community said that they were let in without proper travel documents, on humanitarian grounds.

"The Taliban is hard on us, life is not good now. That's why we left our homes to come here,” said one Hazara woman. “We were in state of horror and shock when we left our houses.”

“There is no place to sit or live here at the border,” she added. “They should set up some camps for us. The situation was good during the previous government, now we have no option but to leave.”

We've got more from UK Armed Forces minister who says there could be an "imminent, highly lethal" terror attack at Kabul airport within hours.

The Foreign Office last night issued new guidance, external telling anyone near the airport to "move away to a safe location and await further advice".

James Heappey earlier told the BBC: "There is now very, very credible reporting of an imminent attack."

He later told us: "The credibility of the reporting has now reached the stage where we believe that there is a very imminent, highly lethal attack possible within Kabul."

Asked by Sky News, external whether an attack could occur in the coming few hours, Mr Heappey replied: "Yes."

Stressing the "severe" nature of the threat, he told the BBC that it had created an "extraordinarily challenging situation, both on the ground and as a set of decisions to be taken in Whitehall".

"People are desperate, people are fearing for their lives anyway, and so I think there's an appetite among many in the queue to take their chances," he said.

• There's more on this story here.

As the security situation around Kabul airport deteriorates, Belgium and Denmark have completed their last evacuation flights and Dutch flights are also coming to an end today. The Dutch government says it has been told by the US they have to leave.

Germany hasn't confirmed its plans but several reports say today's four flights out could be the last, before the German military is largely flown out tomorrow. This is video of one of the final German planes leaving a base in Uzbekistan for Kabul this morning:

French PM Jean Castex said on national radio this morning that the last plane would leave tomorrow evening - after that "we can't go on with evacuations from the airport at Kabul", he told RTL radio.

Belgian PM Alexander De Croo said the last Belgian plane out of Kabul reached Islamabad at 21:30 Pakistan time last night. The decision was taken, he said, because "the situation deteriorated very significantly during the day" and Belgian authorities had got word of the threat of a suicide bombing.

Dutch TV has shown pictures of a harrowing moment on a bus carrying evacuees outside the airport. Seven people who didn't have Dutch passports were "manhandled off the bus" by the Taliban, a source told the Nieuwsuur programme. The bus was one of three carrying 120 people - it took 24 hours for the buses to be allowed into the airport.

Concern over suicide attackspublished at 10:45 British Summer Time 26 August 2021

10:45 BST 26 August 2021

Paul Adams
BBC diplomatic correspondent

The Foreign Office has previously warned against all travel to Afghanistan, and cited the possibility of terrorist attacks.

But the new advice is very specific. Do not travel to Kabul airport. If you're in the area, move away to a safe location and wait for further advice.

Officials won't elaborate on the nature of the threat, but this change comes just 24 hours after US President Joe Biden warned of the danger posed by extremists linked to the group calling itself Islamic State.

Commanders dealing with vast crowds around the airport are increasingly concerned about the possibility of suicide attacks.

What the new advice means for the British evacuation operation is not clear.

This photo of a near empty plane leaving Kabul is being widely shared on Twitter:

As CNN's Alexander Marquardt says in his tweet, the plane is one of three chartered by George and Maria Abi-Habib, co-founders of the Washington-based development firm, Sayara International, which has long worked in Afghanistan.

Mr Abi-Habib is quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying the plane had been chartered to take Afghans to Uganda, but encountered obstacles at Kabul airport. US marines manning the gates refused to allow Afghans with seats on the plane to get inside; one Ugandan woman crawled through a sewage pipe to get into the airport, Mr Abi-Habib told the Journal.

He said that, after days of trying unsuccessfully to resolve the issues, the 345-seat plane had to fly out of Kabul with just 50 passengers. "We can't expect everyone to crawl through a sewer pipe to safety," he said. "The window is closing."

The Wall Street Journal reports that a similar thing happened to a charter flight bound for Ukraine. Some 40 vulnerable Afghan women scheduled to take the flight were refused entry into the airport by US marines. After two days, the 240-seat plane took off with 70 empty seats, Stacia George of the Carter Center is quoted as saying.

Today Programme
BBC Radio 4

There is a "desperate situation for humanitarian aid workers in Afghanistan", says the UK's former foreign secretary David Miliband.

Miliband, now chief executive of humanitarian committee the International Rescue Committee, says there is the visible crisis we can see around Kabul airport where people want to leave and are very fearful for their own future.

But there is also an invisible crisis of tens of millions of Afghans who need aid but who are desperately worried that the military withdrawal on 31 August will not just mean the end of the possibility for people to leave but also signal the withdrawal of humanitarian, diplomatic and political aid.

"That will leave them at the mercy of not just political events but of a collapsing economy, of Covid running rampant and drought in 80% of the country so these are very dark times for the humanitarian sector," he says.

The recent fighting has added about 550,000 internal refugees who have been displaced in their own country and the borders are sealed to the neighbouring states, he says.

Miliband says Pakistan already has two million refugees from Afghanistan.

"You can see the Pakistani point of view they are worried that they can accept another 500,000 or million and the rest of the world will just breathe a sigh of relief and not help them," he says.

Laura Bicker
BBC News

Image source, Republic of Korea Air Force

South Korea will amend its visa laws to accommodate around 380 Afghan people who are arriving in the country.

The evacuees, who worked for the South Korean government in Afghanistan in the embassy, in hospitals and in various humanitarian roles, will be given a special type of permit to allow them to stay and find jobs.

It’s rare for the East Asian country to accept refugees unless they are from North Korea. A number of online sites have sprung up criticising the government for accommodating the Afghan families.

But the justice ministry has tried to emphasise the service these evacuees have given the country and called on people to have an "accepting heart".

“These people are basically our neighbours despite the distance. How can we abandon them when they are facing danger for working for us?” pleaded Minister Park Beom-kye.

The evacuees from Afghanistan will be given tests for Covid-19 and taken to temporary housing south of Seoul to quarantine.

The group includes around 100 infants, including three babies born this month. The families will be given help to adjust to their new life in South Korea, including language lessons.

The Afghan news channel Tolo says its reporter and cameraman were beaten by the Taliban while covering a story about the rise in unemployed people in Kabul.

Ziar Yaad and Baes Majidi were filming footage of jobless people and labourers in the Shahr-e-New area of the capital when the Taliban beat them “for unclear reasons”, Tolo said, external.

“We showed our reporter badges but they came and slapped us and beat us with their guns,” Ziar Yaad said. “They took my mobile and our work equipment with them.”

Several journalists have been beaten since the Taliban took control of the country earlier this month, Tolo reports.

The channel quotes Ahmadullah Wasiq, deputy head of the Taliban’s cultural commission, as saying they took the incident with Yaad and Majidi seriously and would investigate.

“Not only this, but we will also investigate and solve any issues in the way of the journalists,” he is quoted as saying.

The threat of a terrorist attack at Kabul airport "has existed right the way from when this evacuation began", says a former head of British forces in Afghanistan.

Colonel Richard Kemp told the BBC: "That threat of terrorist attack, whether it's from Taliban, the Islamic State, or al-Qaeda, it could equally be all three of those groups.

"The fact that people are talking about Islamic State doesn't make that the most likely threat.

"I think that threat has existed right the way from when this evacuation began, and I have no doubt that our forces are fully aware of the threat and already, for days now, have been taking measures to try and mitigate it, to prevent something like that happening.

"But, clearly, there could be a terrorist attack of some sort against the forces in the airport, maybe forces outside the airport, and of course the people trying to get in."

Image source, Getty Images

The international community must engage with the Taliban in order to avoid a humanitarian and refugee crisis in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s national security adviser has said.

Dr Moeed Yusuf said “there isn’t actually any panic on the borders” with Pakistan, despite reports of thousands of people gathering at the Spin Boldak land crossing.

“So far the blessing in disguise is there hasn’t been a protracted conflict and bloodshed, so the refugee influx... actually has not come,” he told the BBC’s Today programme.

He said another humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan was not inevitable, but only if the international community "learn from the mistakes of the past” and do not create a security vacuum by “abandoning” ordinary Afghans.

“There is a reality on the ground. The Taliban are in control,” he said. “We must keep them honest to their promises, but engage for the sake of the average Afghans. Otherwise we will end up in the same place. It wasn’t good last time.”

Secunder Kermani
BBC News, Kabul

It's incredible and very distressing to see huge numbers of people still turning up to the airport. Whole families, old women sitting in wheelbarrows because they are unable to walk, young children being carried by their parents. Just an endless stream walking through the filth, the dust, the heat. At times, they're facing gunshots.

A large number of them have no realistic chance of boarding the evacuation flights because they just don't have the right paperwork, making it even more difficult for the handful that do have the right paperwork or are foreign citizens to push their way through the crowd.

I was speaking to one elderly woman yesterday, her son was a former interpreter for the US Army. They had all been told to go to the airport but they'd spent six days and six nights living in awful conditions in a kind of make shift camp.

I asked her, given all of this, isn't it worth just sticking it out in Afghanistan and seeing how things go? She said: "We just don't have that option. The Americans should shoot us or they should let us through - but we are not staying here."

Any information about the threat from IS-K or warnings about potential attacks from suicide bombers takes a long time to filter down to those people making their way to the airport - and they're so desperate that their priority is just to find some way out.

Image source, Reuters

A top US diplomat has said that his country's involvement in Afghanistan "isn't going to end" on 31 August, the evacuation deadline Joe Biden has set.

Ross Wilson, the acting US ambassador to Afghanistan, told CBS News that America's commitment to its citizens and Afghan staff will continue "with the Taliban and whatever form of government this country takes."

Mr Wilson also said the US government had been issuing repeated warnings for months telling Americans to leave Afghanistan "immediately", each message in stronger terms.

"Never in my 40 years of working at the state department have I seen such strong language used," he said.

"People chose not to leave, that’s their business, that’s their right. We regret now that many might find themselves in a position that they would rather not be in, and we are determined to try to help them."

Image source, AFP

The Taliban is being urged to “facilitate safe passage” for Afghans wishing to leave after 31 August, either through the airports or via land borders, UK Armed Forces Minister James Heappey says.

He said neighbouring countries and the international community are “putting pressure on the Taliban to not close their borders and to not deny Afghans who are fearful for their lives the opportunity to leave the country”.

Heappey said he was hopeful the Taliban would agree to this because “they don’t want to be an international pariah. They have a network internationally, they have people around the region with whom they have relationships.

“It feels to me as if they would want to have that connectivity from Kabul. Now the key issue is how they control access for the average Afghan to the airport and to flights.”

Image source, MOD

The UK has warned the US decision to leave Afghanistan on 31 August will mean an end to evacuations from Kabul airport. It is calling for "safe passage" to continue after that date, but why can't the UK hold Kabul airport without the US?

The US is providing the bulk of the troops to keep the airport secure and is running many of its facilities - including air traffic control. It is also providing intelligence and surveillance for the operation - which would take significant time and resources to replace.

Gen Sir Richard Barrons, commander Joint Forces Command from 2013 until 2016, said carrying out evacuations without US support would be extremely difficult.

"We would have to be prepared to leave the airport, and fight the Taliban to go and get these people. I just don't see that as a credible proposition.

"And secondly, if the Taliban don't want our aeroplanes to use the airport, one mortar round, one missile, one burst of machine gun fire, and the evacuation is over."

On Wednesday, the BBC was told there were 2,000 people eligible for the UK government's Afghan relocation scheme still in Afghanistan.

Read more here.

Image source, EPA

France will stop evacuating people from Afghanistan from Friday evening, Prime Minister Jean Castex has told France's RTL radio.

On Wednesday, Transport Minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari told local media that 115 French citizens and 2,000 Afghans had been repatriated to France. He said "a few dozen French" were yet to be evacuated.

BBC Monitoring

There are currently no details about the terrorist threat which has prompted Western countries to warn people away from Kabul international airport. However, in the past few days, there have been persistent reports that the so called Islamic State Khorasan Province are believed to have infiltrated Kabul.

Who are they?

Islamic State group operates in Afghanistan under the name of Khorasan Province (ISKP).

Khorasan refers to a historical region covering parts of modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan.

ISKP was announced in January 2015 and is reportedly primarily made up of former members of the Pakistani Taliban and the Afghan Taliban.

It is far more hardline than the Afghan Taliban, and the two are sworn enemies. The group considers Taliban militants “apostates”, making their killing lawful under their interpretation of Islamic law.

IS condemned the 29 February 2020 peace agreement between the US and the Taliban in Afghanistan, vowing to continue to fight.

It also dismissed the recent Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, saying the US handed them the country as part of a secret deal.

ISKP suffered major military defeats in late 2019 and the capture of senior leaders in April 2020.

Since then, however, it bounced back, claiming responsibility for scores of attacks in a surge of violence that came while peace talks between the Taliban and the government had been taking place.

ISKP initially included Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, in May 2019, IS declared a separate new “Pakistan Province”.

ISKP also claimed responsibility for an attack in Iran in September 2018.

Since its establishment, ISKP has said it has carried out regular deadly attacks across Afghanistan. It has been mostly active in the eastern province of Nangarharand in the capital Kabul, but it has also claimed attacks in the provinces of Kunar, Jowzjan, Paktia, Kunduz and Herat.

ISKP has targeted Afghan security forces, Afghan politicians and ministries, the Taliban, religious minorities including Shia Muslims and Sikhs, US and Nato forces, and international agencies including aid organisations.

British troops have flown out nearly 2,000 people on eight flights in the past 24 hours and are planning a further 11 flights on Thursday, UK Armed Forces Minister James Heappey said.

He said 12,279 people had been flown out in the past week, but admitted "there will be people who are in danger who won’t be evacuated" before the 31 August deadline.

Image source, Reuters

UK Armed Forces Minister James Heappey says the threat of terrorist attack which has prompted Western countries to issue a warning to people outside Kabul airport is “very credible".

Heappey told the Today Programme it was intelligence reporting "of an imminent attack” - and described the threat as severe.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday that the Taliban had made a commitment to allow US citizens and at-risk Afghans to leave the country after 31 August evacuation deadline. He stressed that US efforts to help people who wanted to leave would not end on that date.

The secretary of state said that the US administration was making exhaustive efforts to trace those Americans still in Afghanistan.

Yogita Limaye
Mumbai correspondent, BBC News

A huge crowd of people who want to leave Afghanistan has built up near a land border with Pakistan. So far, on the Afghan side, there are no reports that citizens are being stopped from departing.

Carrying just a few belongings, whole families are hoping to cross over to Pakistan, fleeing Taliban rule. Crowds have been building up at Spin Boldak border crossing. The gates are open and some people are making it through.

It’s unclear right now what the situation is at land borders with other countries.

Since the Taliban announced earlier this week that women were being asked not to go to work because of security reasons, the BBC has spoken to female workers in Afghanistan who say they now want to leave the country. They said they had hoped to be able to continue with their jobs, but don’t now believe this will be allowed.