Chaos and violence as crowds keep growing outside Kabul airport

Kilometres of land near airport starting to resemble refugee camps as people desperate to flee Taliban continue to mass.

Kabul, Afghanistan – The crowds outside Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport continue to grow with each passing day of Taliban rule. What was initially a few hundred families outside the roundabout leading to the main entrance in the days since the Taliban first took over the city on August 15 has now ballooned to thousands of desperate men, women and children squatting around a rundown filling station, dirt fields, small patches of grass and nearly any other expanse of land near the gates leading to the non-civilian areas of the airport. Control of the road leading to the north gate of the airport is divided between the Taliban, which mainly patrols the roads, the last remaining members of CIA-backed Afghan intelligence forces, and foreign troops that are guarding the mammoth gate.