Afghanistan crisis live updates: Ghani vows to return, ensure 'justice' for Afghans in 1st address since fleeing

Talks to expand a future Afghan government beyond only Taliban members are continuing in Kabul. Officials close to the discussions on Tuesday are hoping for "some good news" within a day or two. They spoke on condition of anonymity because until now no one wanted details of negotiations released to the media. Senior Taliban leader Amir Khan Muttaqi has already held several rounds of talks with Kabul's political leadership, including Abdullah Abdullah, who once headed the country's negotiating council and former president Hamid Karzai.

After Indian Air Force (IAF) C-17 aircraft carrying 120 Indian officials from Afganistan landed in Gujarat's Jamnagar, the Indian Ambassador to Afghanistan, Rudrendra Tandon thanked IAF for flying them out of Afghanistan in such a crisis situation. "Thank you to the Indian Air Force who flew us out under conditions that are not normal," said Tandon after landing at Jamnagar.

"We had a very large mission. We had a mission of 192 persons that were evacuated from Afghanistan, in literally a period of just three days, in a very orderly fashion in two phases. Apart from the personnel of the embassy, there were also people from the public sector companies in Afghanistan and there were people from Air India, who also needed to be evacuated as the situation in Kabul city was rapidly changing. Then there were also Indian citizens who found themselves in distress due to the fast changing situation. But our policy was that anyone who reaches the embassy, would be taken into the evacuation mission and will have a safe and secure exit from the country," Tandon said.

"You cannot imagine how great it is to be back home. After two weeks of intense complicated situation, I had to take a decision on evacuation. I am very happy that the mission is over now and we are back home safely without any untoward incident or accident," said Rudrendra Tandon at Jamnagar IAF airbase.

China has expressed a willingness to hold talks with the US to promote a ``soft landing'' in Afghanistan, while heavily criticizing Washington and again demanding that the Biden administration halt its attacks on China. Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in a phone call Monday with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, blamed what he called America's ``hasty'' military withdrawal the chaos accompanying the Taliban's seizure of power in Afghanistan, according to a Foreign Ministry statement dated Tuesday.

Germany's defence minister on Tuesday urged NATO to learn lessons from its Afghanistan mission -- slammed as a "debacle" by critics, as allies struggled to pull off a difficult evacuation operation from the capital, Kabul. "The question for us will be to what extent are we willing to carry the consequences for this, and to what extent we are prepared to take measures that up to this point we have left to the Americans," Kramp-Karrenbauer said.

A first German military plane to land in Kabul since the Taliban takeover evacuated only seven people, the government said on Tuesday, due to chaos at the Afghan capital's airport. Germany, which had the second largest military contingent in Afghanistan after the United States, wants to airlift thousands of German-Afghan dual nationals as well as rights activists, lawyers and people who worked with foreign forces. Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said the A400M transport plane undertook a "breakneck landing" on Monday evening, with its main aim to bring in German soldiers to secure the evacuation.

The Taliban announced Tuesday an “amnesty” across Afghanistan and urged women to join its government, trying to calm nerves across a nervous capital city that only the day before saw chaos at its airport as people tried to flee their rule. While there were no major reports of abuses or fighting in Kabul, many residents have stayed home and remain fearful after the insurgents' takeover saw prisons emptied and armories looted.