Afghanistan crisis live updates: Resistance leader Msssoud lays down condition for talks, says Taliban must stop Panjshir offensive

The top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee says some Americans who have been trying to get out of Afghanistan since the US military left are sitting in airplanes at an airport ready to leave but the Taliban are not letting them take off.

Amid fierce fighting between the Taliban and Afghanistan’s National Resistance Front (NRF) over the control of Panjshir Valley in the north of Kabul, the militant group has said that it will soon form the country’s future government and ruled out that the delay to make an announcement was caused by a “number of obstacles” in the way.

At least four planes chartered to evacuate several hundred people seeking to escape the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan have been unable to leave the country for days, officials said Sunday, with conflicting accounts emerging about why they flights weren't able to take off as pressure ramps up on the United States to help those left behind to flee.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday held telephonic calls with the top Gulf leaders, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and discussed the current situation in Afghanistan and bilateral ties with them.

Amid heavy fighting between the Taliban and Panjshir resistance forces, a number of religious scholars at a gathering in Kabul on Sunday asked both sides for the ceasefire. Calling it an illegitimate war in the country, the clerics asked both sides to announce a ceasefire and to negotiate a peaceful solution, reported Tolo News. "You are fighting based on what justification to kill your Muslim brothers? Dear scholars, if this situation continues, the country will turn into an ethnicity-based and region-based conflict," said Abdul Qader Qanet, a religious scholar.

A day after the arrival in Kabul of the head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Lt Gen Faiz Hamid, the Taliban on Sunday said that he is in Afghanistan to improve bilateral relations between Kabul and Islamabad. Meanwhile, sources close to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of Hizb-e-Islami party, said that Hamid also met Hekmatyar, and they discussed the current situation in the country, Tolo News reported. Earlier, Pakistani media reported that Hamid was in Kabul at the invitation of the Taliban, but the Taliban said that Pakistan had proposed his visit to Kabul.

The world "got it wrong" on how quickly the Taliban would take over Afghanistan, the head of the British army said on Sunday. "It was the pace of it that surprised us and I don't think we realised quite what the Taliban were up to," Britain's chief of the defence staff, Gen Nick Carter told the BBC. Asked whether military intelligence was wrong, he said the government received intelligence from a variety of sources. "It's not purely about military intelligence," he said.

The top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee says some Americans who have been trying to get out of Afghanistan since the US military left are sitting in airplanes at an airport ready to leave but the Taliban are not letting them take off. Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas says there are six airplanes at the Mazar-e-Sharif airport with American citizens on board, along with their Afghan interpreters, and the Taliban are “holding them hostage” right now.

The leader of the Afghan opposition group resisting Taliban forces in the Panjshir valley north of Kabul said on Sunday he welcomed proposals from religious scholars for a negotiated settlement to end the fighting. Ahmad Massoud, head of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRFA), made the announcement on the group's Facebook page. Earlier, Taliban forces said they had fought their way into the provincial capital of Panjshir after securing the surrounding districts.

Germany wants to talk with the Taliban about how to its remaining local contract workers out of Afghanistan, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday, adding it was a good sign that the airport in Kabul could be used for evacuation flights again. "We need to talk to the Taliban about how we can continue to get people who worked for Germany out of the country and to safety," Merkel said.

Top US General Mark Milley questioned whether the Taliban can consolidate power as they seek to shift from a guerrilla force to government. "I think there's at least a very good probability of a broader civil war," said Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a bleak assessment. "That will then in turn lead to conditions that could, in fact, lead to a reconstitution of Al-Qaeda or a growth of ISIS (Islamic State group)," he told Fox News Saturday.

The Taliban said on Sunday their forces had fought their way into the provincial capital of Panjshir, the valley where opposition forces have been holding out since the fall of Kabul three weeks ago. The police headquarters and district centre of Rukhah, adjacent to the provincial capital Bazarak, had fallen, and opposition forces had suffered numerous casualties, with large numbers of prisoners and captured vehicles, weapons and ammunition, Taliban spokesman Bilal Karimi said on Twitter. Fighting was underway in Bazarak, he said. It was not possible to confirm the report, which was echoed on other Taliban Twitter accounts.