Three killed in firing on protesters in Jalalabad

KABUL: At least three people were killed in anti-Taliban protests in the Afghan city of Jalalabad on Wednesday, witnesses said, as the militant group moved to create a government and Western countries ramped up evacuations from a chaotic Kabul airport.

The deaths mar the Taliban's efforts to consolidate Islamist rule and their promises of peace following their sweep into the capital. They have said they will not take revenge against old enemies and will respect the rights of women within the framework of Islamic law.

The witnesses said the deaths in Jalalabad took place when local residents tried to install Afghanistan's national flag at a square in the city, some 150kmfrom the capital on the main road to Pakistan.

There were also more than a dozen people injured after Taliban militants opened fire on protesters in the eastern city, international media reported. Taliban spokesmen were not immediately reachable for comment.

Thousands of Afghans, many of whom helped US-led foreign forces over two decades, are desperate to leave the country and people are flooding to Kabul airport.

Taliban commanders and soldiers fired into the air on Wednesday to disperse the crowds outside the airport, a Taliban official said. "We have no intention to injure anyone," he said. Several people were reportedly injured in the stampede.

Meanwhile, a statue of a prominent anti-Taliban fighter killed by the group before they took power for the first time in the 1990s was decapitated in Bamiyan city.

Abdul Ali Mazari, a political leader who represented Afghanistan´s ethnic Hazara community, was declared a national martyr in 2016 -- more than two decades after the Taliban said he had died in a gunfight aboard a helicopter.

"We are not sure who has blown up the statue, but there are different groups of Taliban present here, including some... who are known for their brutality," a resident told AFP, asking not to be named.

Pictures of the damaged statue being shared on social media showed it largely intact, but with the head resting at the plinth. Another resident, who asked to be identified only as Zara, said a group of Taliban fighters used a rocket-propelled grenade to destroy it on Tuesday.

"The statue is destroyed and people are sad -- but also scared," she said.

In 1995, the Taliban said Mazari was killed in a gun battle on a helicopter taking him and other prisoners to Kandahar.

A spokesman for the group at the time said that Mazari had snatched a Kalashnikov rifle from a guard and shot dead six Taliban fighters, before being killed himself.