Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes in northern Afghanistan to escape battles that have overwhelmed their towns and villages as government forces try to fend off advancing Taliban forces. Families have flowed into parks and streets in Kabul.
Families described on Tuesday bombardment, gunfire and airstrikes pounding their neighborhoods in multiple parts of the north, with civilians caught in the crossfire. Some said that as the Taliban captured towns, they hunted down and killed male relatives of members of the police forces and quickly started imposing new restrictions on women.
Karimi was among hundreds of people from around the north who were crowded into Kabul’s main downtown park, Shahr-e-Naw. Men, women and children have been sleeping for days outside on the ground in blazing summer heat. A few have blankets to pad the ground or sheets to hang up as curtains for some privacy.
More than 17,000 people from the north have arrived in Kabul in the past two weeks, staying in parks, with relatives or on the streets, said Tamim Azimi, spokesman for the state ministry for disaster management. At another park on Kabul’s northern outskirts where some 2,000 displaced were living, Zarmina Takhari, said she had received no government help since arriving three days ago and has had to rely on food from volunteers.
Nasir Ahmed, 14, said he witnessed the Taliban whipping a man with a rubber hose after a picture of him posing with an Afghan flag was found on his phone. He said he also saw insurgents hitting women whose head coverings were considered improper. Her office said it had received reports of summary executions, attacks against current and former government officials and their relatives, military use and destruction of homes, schools and clinics, and the laying of large numbers of improvised explosive devices.
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