Taliban Threatens Arab TV Station Al Hadath Reporter, Stops Reportage

No further details about the meetings have been announced.

The Ministry of Defense of the Taliban said that during the meeting with the Chinese envoy, Mullah Yaqoob, the Taliban Defense Minister, appreciated Beijing's assistance and cooperation for the victims of the recent earthquake in Afghanistan and assured facilitation for Chinese investors in Afghanistan.

The Taliban's foreign ministry also said in a statement that Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban Foreign Minister, during the meeting with Xiaoyong, appreciated the process of issuing visas to Afghan businessmen in Kabul by the Chinese government and called it useful for bilateral trade between Afghanistan and China.

Muttaqi said that the group asked China to provide more opportunities for Afghanistan's exporters.

This is Xiaoyong's second visit to Kabul since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021.

The Taliban had hinted that they support a United China amidst the dispute between China and Taiwan.

The Taliban's foreign ministry had also reacted to the visit of Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, to Taiwan.

Abdul Qahar Balkhi, the spokesperson of the Taliban Foreign Ministry, indirectly referred to the United States and said that countries should avoid provocative actions.

The Taliban's Foreign Ministry stressed on "the principled policy of a United China" and said that the Taliban wants all countries to "avoid actions that are considered a violation of the national sovereignty of countries and provide the basis for further provocative actions".

Taliban and Iranian authorities have not commented on the issue so far.

If confirmed by officials, this is the second Iranian soldier to be killed by the Taliban since the group took control of Afghanistan.

Previously according to Afghanistan International's sources from Nimroz province, a Taliban fighter had shot at Iranian border guards, one of whom was killed.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran, then, responded by asking the Taliban to identify and punish the perpetrators of the attack.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran had stressed that "the incidents on the border between Iran and Afghanistan happened as of result of the lack of attention and understanding of Afghan border guards about the border lines of the two countries".

According to Mujahid, based on the Doha agreement, the intelligence had to be shared with the Taliban.

In an interview with Afghanistan's National Television station, Mujahid said that the United States intelligence operation about Ayman al- Zawahiri, the leader of Al-Qaeda was a violation of the Doha Agreement.

The Taliban spokesperson further claimed that the US drone strike in Kabul had been conducted with powerful substances which eliminated everything with “no traces left at the scene”.

However, in an interview with National Public Radio (NPR), US National Security Adviser Jack Sullivan said that the US is aware that senior members of the Haqqani network, part of the Taliban government in Kabul, had knowledge of al-Zawahiri's presence.

Meanwhile, according to media reports, al-Zawahiri was staying at the house of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban's interior minister. Haqqani held meetings with the leader of al-Qaeda at his residence, but he was not there on the day of the US drone strike.

It has been reported that a couple of relatives of the Taliban's interior minister had also been killed in the drone strike on al-Zawahiri's safe house in Kabul.

According to AI sources, Ariana airlines’ senior management have "verbally" told the female attendants that they are no longer needed in their roles.

However, the Taliban have always denied firing female employees of the government.

Female employees of the airlines were allowed to work, fully dressed briefly under the Taliban. But, in the past five months, they are only required to sign attendance twice a month and receive 5,000 Afghanis as a monthly allowance.

With these flight attendants now forced to stay at home, female passengers on Ariana flights can receive no help, especially, in emergency situations.

Ariana is not the first state-run organisation where female employees have been forcibly removed from work by the Taliban. Previously, the Taliban had asked female employees of the Ministry of Finance to be replaced with male family members.

While noting that this massacre should be recognized as a genocide, Nazary has warned that the people of Afghanistan are once again facing a similar situation under the Taliban reign in Afghanistan.

After entering Mazar-e-Sharif city in northern Balkh province on August 8, 1998, the Taliban killed many civilians, particularly those belonging to the Hazara ethnicity.

In their report about the massacre, human rights organisations too said that the Taliban "killed thousands of civilians" by recapturing the city of Mazar-e-Sharif in 1998.

Human Rights Watch had said in a report that the massacre at Mazar-e-Sharif by the Taliban was in "revenge" for the killing of 2,000 members of this group's forces in 1997, who had been killed after capturing the cities of Mazar-e-Sharif and Shaberghan.

The Taliban have also been accused of shooting eight Iranian diplomats and a journalist after entering the Iranian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif, on the same day. However, the group has never taken responsibility for that incident.

Some Iranian social media users remembered Mahmoud Saremi, an Iranian journalist who was killed on this day. Asma Qaidizada wrote on Facebook, "Today is the anniversary of the killing of a journalist and eight Iranian diplomats in a brutal Taliban attack on the Iranian Consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif.”

Asma criticised the statement published by the Iran's Foreign Ministry on this occasion and said that in this announcement, the Taliban as a group had been not condemned, and the perpetrators of this terrorist attack were mentioned as anonymous.

On August 8, Iran's Foreign Ministry had issued a statement calling for the clarification regarding the killing of its diplomats in Mazar-e-Sharif and various aspects of this attack.