Afghan authorities have confirmed that a young footballer fell to his death after trying to stow away on a US military plane leaving Kabul airport.

Zaki Anwari, 19, had played for Afghanistan's national youth team.

Further details of when he died have not been disclosed.

In a statement on Facebook, Afghanistan's General Directorate of Physical Education and Sports paid tribute to Mr Anwari. "May he rest in heaven and pray to God for his family, friends and sports colleagues," the sports body said.

You can read more about Zaki Anwari here.

Others have also been sharing their respects on social media. "His departure is a great sorrow," wrote one user on Instagram.

Since the Taliban's recapture of Afghanistan, thousands of people have been scrambling to Kabul's airport as Western countries rush to evacuate their citizens and Afghan colleagues.

Images emerged on Monday showing hundreds of people running alongside a US air force plane as it moved down a runway. Some people were seen clinging to its side.

Local media reports said that at least two people fell to their deaths after it took off. The US air force has also confirmed that human remains were found in the landing gear of an aircraft after it arrived in Qatar.

Jonathan Beale
BBC defence correspondent

Image source, Reuters

It’s now a race against the clock to get as many people out of Kabul as possible.

The BBC has been told there are several thousand UK nationals and dual passport holders who still need to get out of the country. Eight RAF flights went in and out of Kabul yesterday with a similar number expected today.

They have the capacity to fly more than a thousand people a day. But the BBC understands that not all flights have been full.

The airport is operating to a strict schedule. That means aircraft can’t just wait around until all their seats are filled. The RAF flights are ferrying not just UK nationals, but some foreign nationals, as well as the Afghans who worked for the British and are now being allowed to settle in the UK. Most are being flown to a Middle East hub.

Commercial charters are being used to make the onward journey. The greatest challenge at present appears to be processing the people who qualify to be flown out.

One person who’s trying to get people out told the BBC the “system is working, but it’s slow”.

Those wishing to fly out are being told to wait for a phone call before setting out for the airport – not least to avoid the risks of travelling through a city under Taliban control.

At some stage someone will have to make the decision to leave. That will once again be the decision of the US who are providing the bulk of the security at the airport as well as overseeing Air Traffic Control. They too need to be flown out.

Video footage shows the moment a child is handed to a soldier as chaos continues at Kabul airport.

Many Afghans are trying to escape via the airport.

Taliban fighters have fired in the air and US soldiers have used tear gas to control the crowds of people.

Image source, PA Media

A five-year-old Afghan refugee has fallen to his death from a hotel window in the northern English city of Sheffield.

He is reported to have fallen from a ninth-floor room in the OYO Metropolitan Hotel on Wednesday afternoon.

A fellow Afghan staying at the hotel – who worked as an interpreter for the British Army in Afghanistan - said the boy’s family only arrived in the UK 15 days ago.

Police said the boy’s death is not being treated as suspicious.

Enver Solomon of the Refugee Council called it a "terrible tragedy" and said an urgent investigation was needed "so steps can be taken to quickly learn lessons."

You can read more on this story here.

Georgina Rannard
BBC News

Image source, PA Media

I’ve just been speaking to an Afghan interpreter who worked for British forces during combat in Afghanistan. Ali (names have been changed to protect identities) fled several years ago after being threatened by the Taliban. His family are in hiding.

The UK government has now given Ali permission to resettle in the UK, but his parents and siblings have not been given visas. He desperately wants them to be evacuated and fears they will be killed.

This is what he told me:

"One night a stranger in the street called my name. He was in the Taliban and he said he knew I was working for the British. It was very shocking for me. They knew everything about me. He said, 'You know what will happen to you.'

"After that, I fled and became a refugee in a nearby country. I haven’t seen my mum, dad, or my brothers for years. I sold my family’s jewellery to survive.

"Now that the Taliban have taken power, my relatives have gone into hiding because of threats to our family - the Taliban are knocking on the door of their house.

"I’ve now been given permission to settle in the UK, but what about my family?

"I was listening to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson in parliament on Wednesday - he said Britain is giving 20,000 visas to Afghans. To whom are they giving the visas?

"I served with the forces, I am proud that I served with them. My family are in danger, but they are not giving my family the visas. So who will get the visas? Will it be film stars or politicians? They have enough money to settle anywhere in the world. I thought, why are they not helping interpreters who served alongside UK forces?

"I can’t be happy that I have permission to go to the UK while I’m worried about my mum, dad, brothers who are hiding because of my service.

"I never demanded in the past that the UK help my family but now if I go, how can I sleep at night? How long can my family hide?"

Image source, Getty Images

The G7 foreign ministers on Thursday called on the Taliban to honour their commitments to safe passage out of the country, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said in the group's first formal statement on the crisis in Afghanistan.

The ministers are "deeply concerned by reports of violent reprisals in parts of Afghanistan", Raab said in the statement.

"The G7 are continuing efforts to do everything possible to evacuate vulnerable persons from Kabul airport and call on all parties to continue to facilitate that," he added.

The US military has said it is in "constant communication" with the Taliban regarding evacuations, with Pentagon spokesman John Kirby saying today that Taliban agreement was necessary to the ongoing mission.

The Taliban are carrying out a highly-organised door-to-door hunt for people on their wanted list, says the head of the group providing intelligence to the UN.

"What we have seen is that the Taliban, in advance of moving into all major cities in Afghanistan, not just Kabul, is that they have a more advanced intelligence system," Christian Nellemann, of the Norwegian Centre for Global Analyses, told the BBC.

"They have lists of individuals and even within the very first hours of moving into Kabul they began a search of former government employees - especially in intelligence services and the special forces units."

He said that, not only could this lead to mass executions, but also a "mass revealing of our methods and the intelligence networks that the West has provided. So this could undermine severely a number of our Western intelligence services."

As we reported earlier, the Norwegian Centre for Global Analyses’ report to the UN also said the Taliban are recruiting new informer networks to collaborate with their regime.

Image source, EPA

Image source, Getty Images

A Taliban official has told Reuters news agency that the militia "cannot be blamed" for the chaos and violence around Kabul airport as Afghans rushed to evacuate the country.

Maintaining law and order in Taliban-controlled territory is the group's "top priority", the official said.

Talks among Taliban leaders regarding the fate of Afghan national army members have begun, the official said, and some of the group's senior members have started registering arms, ammunition and vehicles left behind by US and allied forces.

A professional Afghan woman, with a visa for another country, has told the BBC that she was turned back from Kabul airport by the Taliban because she was alone.

She said that when she arrived at the airport she was approached by two to three men carrying whips who demanded to know why she was not with a “mahram” (man).

“It was so scary, nightmarish, like a movie,” she told the BBC’s Afghan Service.

The woman, who we are not identifying, said she saw no signs of change among the Taliban militants. They are “brutal as before”, she said, and fears they will never let her leave the country.

“There is no hope, it’s like the end of the world,” she said.

Image source, Getty Images

The UN's cultural agency Unesco has called for the protection of Afghanistan's cultural heritage.

The agency also demanded a safe environment for artists.

Afghanistan is home to two Unesco sites including the Bamiyan valley. Two Buddha statues at the site were blown up by the Taliban in 2001.

"It is crucial for the future of Afghanistan to safeguard and preserve these landmarks," Unesco said in a statement.

It added that the country's cultural sites and diverse heritage were a part of Afghanistan's history and identity.

Image source, Getty Images

The heads of UN and international aid groups have appealed for more humanitarian funding for Afghanistan in a joint statement.

They also pledged to stay and deliver, warning that they are $800m (£584m) short of what is needed.

The UK on Wednesday said it would double its aid to Afghanistan to £286m this year.

Image source, Reuters

"Living under the rule of the Taliban regime is like being in an abusive relationship. At first it's good. They make lots of promises, they watch their steps, they even deliver on some of their promises. But while you are being lulled into a false sense of security, they are making their plans.”

These are the words of Friba (not her real name) who was 10 when her father disappeared during Taliban rule in 1999. Now grown up and living in London, she describes how life under the Taliban went from “a living hell to a black hole of hopelessness”.

She says she is afraid for her family, friends and the millions of other people who are still in Afghanistan as the Taliban once again takes power.

You can read Friba’s story here.

The US State Department has issued a new alert to US citizens in Kabul asking Americans and their families to travel to the city's airport "as soon as possible".

"The United States Government cannot ensure safe passage to the airport," the alert says, according to the BBC's US partner CBS News.

Image source, European Pressphoto Agency

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has called on countries to ensure that health services across Afghanistan are maintained, as it warned of increasing cases of Covid-19 across the country.

The organisation's regional director, Dr Ahmed Al-Mandhari, said that WHO teams in areas which had seen large influxes of people fleeing the Taliban advance are now reporting increasing cases of people with Covid-19 like symptoms.

According to the WHO, there have been 152,365 cases of coronavirus in the country and 7,043 deaths.

However, Afghanistan has limited testing capacity and reporting of cases across the country is sketchy. A survey conducted by the Ministry of Health last year estimated that as many as 10 million Afghans - or 31.5% of the population - may have contracted the virus.

WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic also warned that the chaos at Kabul airport, where thousands of people are trying to flee the Taliban, is slowing deliveries of crucial medical supplies.

Refugees at the airport are being tested for the virus before boarding evacuation flights.

In the Pentagon briefing room, spokesman John Kirby is asked if the US could operate missions similar to British paratroopers to retrieve citizens from Kabul. Kirby replies that the Pentagon's military mission continues to be to maintain control of the airport.

Kirby is later asked if the US mission - and the prospect of staying in Afghanistan beyond 31 August - requires Taliban "acquiescence".

"It's a fundamental fact of the reality of where we are that communications and a certain level of agreement with the Taliban on what we're trying to accomplish has to continue to occur," Kirby replies.

He emphasises that there have been "no hostile interactions" between the Taliban and US troops.

Thirteen C17 cargo planes arrived in the last 24 hours with more troops and equipments. Twelve C17's departed Kabul in that same period with more than 2,000 evacuees.

We've been following today's daily briefing at the Pentagon.

More than 5,200 US troops are on the ground in Kabul, the Pentagon says.

Roughly 7,000 people have been evacuated by the US military since 14 August.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby is asked about the 31 August deadline - meant to mark the final exit for US troops.

"There has been no decision to change the deadline, and we are focused on doing everything we can inside that deadline to move as many people out as possible," Kirby says.

Reality Check

Image source, Getty Images

Speaking to ABC News, President Biden said: "We trained and equipped an Afghan military force of some 300,000 strong.”

This figure is contested and considered by many experts to be a significant overestimate.

The US watchdog set up to monitor the situation in Afghanistan provides the basis for the president’s figure, but it is misleading to use it out of context.

The US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (Sigar) gives an overall figure for Afghan security forces in April 2021 of 300,699, external.

However, this figure combines both army/air force personnel (182,071) and the police force (118,628) – who are not deployed as part of the country’s military.

The Sigar report also notes that these figures include “ghost” security personnel.

This, it says, means that “more than $300 million a year was spent paying salaries to non-existent personnel in the Afghan security forces”.

A recent investigation by BBC Newsnight indicates that the size of the army could be low as 50,000 - much lower even than these Sigar estimates.

Alistair Coleman
BBC Monitoring

Image source, PA Wire

Claims that Christian missionaries are facing execution at the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan appear to be based on inaccurate historic viral social media messages, and are likely incorrect.

The issue was brought up by North Antrim MP Ian Paisley in the House of Commons yesterday.

There are at least two versions of the claim doing the rounds. One says there are 22 Christians under threat of death. It’s accompanied by a disturbing photo of an execution, taken in Iraq in 2015 and relating to Islamic State rather than the Taliban.

Another message says 229 Christians have been sentenced to death, and purports to be from a missionary working in Africa.

Versions of this message have been in circulation since at least 2017, where the victims are variously in Iraq or Syria. It appears that the current message has simply replaced the words “Islamic State” with “Afghan Extremists”.

The rumour is based on a genuine incident in 2007, when the Taliban took 23 Korean church workers hostage, killing two of them before a deal was released for the release of the others.

However, there’s no evidence that Christian missionaries are currently facing death in Afghanistan.

Saher Baloch
BBC Urdu

When the news of Taliban taking over Kabul broke on Pakistani news channels, the responses were mixed.

But most - including some Pakistani politicians and a majority among the religious parties - couldn’t hide their glee that America had “lost”.

Many began pointing to a clip of the late former director-general of Pakistan’s spy agency – called the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) - describing the US withdrawal as “his vision”.

In the May 2014 clip, Hamid Gul, also known as the "Father of the Taliban", can be heard saying that "when history will be written it will be said that ISI defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan with America's help.

“But it will also be added that ISI defeated America (in Afghanistan) with America's help."

Image source, AFP

Not everyone is overjoyed at developments over the border – and warnings have begun to emerge aimed at those who might hope to pull strings from afar.

Pakistan has long been accused of playing a paradoxical role in Afghanistan. The country has previously been accused by the US, India, and most importantly by its own politicians and activists of using Afghanistan as a "backyard" to provide safe haven for militants to be used against India.

Senator Sherry Rehman, talking to the BBC, said that it would be a mistake for Pakistan to once again see Afghanistan as a “strategic backyard”.

Meanwhile, the former chairperson for Pakistan’s senate committee for human rights, Afrasiab Khattak, has come under fire from the state for his blunt criticism of Pakistan’s previous mistakes.

“Basically [the Taliban] are against the concept of a modern state,” he said. “Unfortunately, they are being supported from the outside.

“And those supporting them will pay a heavy price just the way they did in the past."

The Taliban are "keeping their word" by supporting foreign forces to evacuate their nationals from Kabul's airport, an official from the group has told Reuters news agency.

"We are facilitating safe-exit passage not just for foreigners but also to Afghans," they said.

"We are preventing any form of violent, verbal clash at the airport among Afghans, foreigners and Taliban members," the official said.

However there have been reports that the Taliban were not letting people access Kabul’s airport, even if they have travel visas. A confidential UN document, seen by the BBC, said the militants were intensifying their hunt for people who worked for and collaborated with Nato and US forces.