Other desperate families have been forced to “wade through sewage” to escape the chaos at Afghanistan’s Kabul airport with children among those killed in the chaos
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Australian citizen beaten by Taliban at Kabul airport
The Taliban have beaten a man and left him covered in blood as he tried to board a Kabul airport evacuation flight.
The man, who is speaking in English describes what happened as he tried to flee Afghanistan before the cut off time when the savage group say they will stop people leaving.
Desperate Afghan families have been forced to “wade through sewage” to escape the chaos while children are killed in the carnage.
Video footage from near the airport shows a man with blood running down his face and clothing as he speaks to the camera.
Speaking in an Australian accent, he says on camera: “They hit me mate. I’m an Australian citizen, they hit me. See this happened to me,”
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Image:
Twitter/ Saleem Javed)
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Image:
Twitter/ Saleem Javed)
One of Taliban fighters who has surrounded him cocks his rifle before the footage cuts out.
The MailOnline reports that the man was born overseas but has a wife in Adelaide and a brother in Sydney.
He is beaten by the Taliban as he fled to the airport along with his cousins who were attacked before they were were dragged away.
One of the women accompanying the man had a phone hidden under her headscarf.
Reports claim he has since messaged Australian relatives saying the family had been split up in different locations.
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Image:
Twitter/ Saleem Javed)
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Image:
via REUTERS)
The Taliban said on Tuesday they will prevent Afghans leaving the country on evacuation flights.
Sky’s chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay said a “hopeful zone” had been created outside the airport – a holding pen for people those with the right paperwork to escape the country.
He said on Sky News: “Here, they wait next to a sewage canal which acts as a moat between them and the soldiers who can be seen behind a wall on the other side,
“The most desperate will step into the stream of putrid waste, waving their documents at the troops and pleading for attention.
“If the soldiers see someone with what appears to be the correct documentation, they will drag them out of the canal.
“But, often, their papers are deemed invalid, and they will have immersed themselves in the city’s effluent for nothing.”
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Image:
via REUTERS)
Hundreds of Afghans are seen standing knee-deep in a sewage canal wait to hear if they will be rescued.
Ramsay described a “sense of panic” as thousands of desperate people wait to go through the system at the airport
“In the past 24 hours, as the deadline for military withdrawal grows ever nearer, tension has grown,” he said.
He said the Taliban fighters are using “brutal crowd-control techniques” and carrying out a “vicious beating of anyone who defies their orders”.
Ramsay also voiced the mounting fears of a suicide bomb attack on the waiting crowds.
In the report he said “We understand that the Taliban command structure is holding, but we are talking about an extreme group with extreme members, and it only takes one fundamentalist with no compunction about blowing people up to disobey orders and turn this vision of misery into a scene of bloody carnage.
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Twitter)
“While that is a very real concern for us and those waiting here, they have little choice but to wait while soldiers slowly try to work through paperwork belonging to thousands of people.”
Ramsay said he and his team have “witnessed bodies covered in white sheets being carried from the crowd” and have been left in tears by the scenes of chaos as people are “dying all around us”.
He said he wakes every morning to “dozens of emails” begging for help.
At least 21 people have been at the airport since August 14 as troops scramble rescue foreign nationals and Afghan allies.
Seven people including a toddler were crushed to death in a stampede on Saturday.
Men, women and children were also crushed with reports of people collapsing from exhaustion and asphyxiation.
Masoud Andarabi, Afghanistan’s former interior minister, also claimed Taliban fighters “are trying to rule over people by terrorising, killing young children and elderly citizens”.
The Taliban has insisted Afghans crowded into the airport had nothing to fear and should return to their normal lives.
But extremist group warned they will bar Afghans from fleeing the country, saying: “The road to Kabul is closed.”
Around 5,000 Brits and Afghans who have been promised refuge in the UK but are believed to be still in Afghanistan.
British defence chiefs are thought to be ending civilian rescue flights tomorrow or Friday to allow enough time to get UK forces out before American forces disappear.
The MoD are reportedly airlifting around 2,000 people a day to safety, but anyone who is not already at or near Kabul airport will be able to get out on military flights, officials say.
