Earlier, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order to pave the way for splitting seven billion dollars of frozen Afghan funds.

The order is to split the funds between possible compensations for victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and humanitarian aid to the country.

“If the United States does not deviate from its position and continue its provocative actions, the Islamic Emirate will also be forced to reconsider its policy towards the country,” the Afghan rulers said in an official statement.

The rulers also called on the U.S. to release the frozen assets unconditionally.

Biden’s decision sparked outrage among Afghans and former president Hamid Karzai has called it an “atrocity” against Afghan citizens.

Local media reported that hundreds of people protested in Kabul on Tuesday to condemn Biden’s decision.

Afghan politicians and academics have demanded that the frozen funds should not be used to compensate 9/11 victims since no Afghan was involved in the attacks nor should the country’s own money be channeled as aid.

They want the funds to be kept untouched to ensure the stability of the Afghan currency and the country’s financial system as a whole.

Afghanistan has approximately nine billion dollars in currently frozen assets, including the seven billion dollars in the U.S.

The remaining funds are mostly held in Germany, the United Arab Emirates and Switzerland.

The surviving family members of Mr Ahmadi who was killed by a US drone strike in August after US military intelligence mistakenly took him for an ISIS-K terrorist, had said they want the Americans responsible for the tragic mistake to be taken to court, while also asking for financial compensation and resettlement in the United States or another safe country for the rest of their lives.

Zemari Ahmadi, 43, was killed along with seven children and two adult family members. Before his death, Ahmadi was an innocent aid worker that worked for a US company.
provided protein nutrition to starving Aghan kids.

The ill-fated strike which took place days before the US military withdrew from Afghanistan came amid a frenzied evacuation effort following the Taliban’s sudden return to power and only days after a devastating attack close to Kabul’s airport by IS-K, a local branch of the Islamic State (IS) group. US Army General McKenzie described the strike as a “tragic mistake” and added that the Taliban had not been involved in the intelligence that led to the strike.

The US has now offered to pay relatives of the victims while yhe Pentagon said it was also working to help surviving members of the family relocate to the US.

The compensation offer was made in a meeting between Colin Kahl, the under-secretary of defence for policy, and Steven Kwon, the founder and president of an aid group active in Afghanistan called Nutrition and Education International, the Pentagon said in a statement.

Mr Kahl noted Mr Ahmadi and others who were killed “were innocent victims who bore no blame and we’re not affiliated with ISIS-K or threats to US forces”, said a statement attributed to Defence Department spokesman John Kirby.

He reiterated Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin’s commitment to the families, including “condolence payments”. Austin also apologised for the attack, but Mr Ahmadi’s 22-year-old nephew Farshad Haidari said that was not enough.

“They must come here and apologise to us face-to-face,” he told the AFP news agency in Kabul.

Home Secretary Priti Patel revealed that a group of players, coaches and family members’ 111 visa applications are to be approved.

The squad have been in Pakistan on temporary visas since fleeing Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover of the country, but face being sent back once their asylum period ran out.

A source close to Ms Patel reportedly told The Sun: ‘At the heart of Priti’s new Afghan resettlement scheme is the protection of women and girls.’

The source added the team ‘will be able to make the UK their home, free from fear and persecution’.

Meanwhile, the Australian government evacuated the Afghan national female football team and the girl’s team were recently given asylum in Portugal.

Kashif Siddiqi, the co-founder of the charity Football for Peace, which led the campaign to bring the squad to the UK, thanked Ms Patel and Prime Minister Boris Johnson for ‘giving these players a future’.

He said in a statement: ‘We’re still waiting to hear through official channels but if confirmed it means that 111 Afghan girls, family and coaches have just had their lives changed forever by Britain. Every single visa approved is a life enhanced, the right to education protected and the freedom to play football preserved. Thank you to Boris Johnson and Priti Patel for listening to us and for giving these players a future in the home of football. Without Britain they faced a return to the nightmare that is Afghanistan; this decision gives them futures potentially playing for Leeds United and other clubs.’

It comes after the Taliban announced it would effectively ban Afghan women from playing sport because ‘their face and body will not be covered.’

The country’s new deputy culture minister, Ahmadullah Wasiq, confirmed the militant group’s Sharia law interpretation when asked if they would allow women to play cricket.

Wasiq told Australian broadcaster SBS.’I don’t think women will be allowed to play cricket because it is not necessary that women should play cricket,’ In cricket, they might face a situation where their face and body will not be covered. Islam does not allow women to be seen like this. It is the media era, and there will be photos and videos, and then people watch it.  Islam and the Islamic Emirate [Afghanistan] do not allow women to play cricket or play the kind of sports where they get exposed.’

In the past 20 years, 270 women have been judges in Afghanistan and have made convictions against the Taliban, killers and murderers. But with the change in government in Afghanistan, their lives are now in danger as they are in secret locations for fear of being killed.

In a new interview with the BBC, six former female judges (whose names have been changed for their safety) spoke from secret locations across Afghanistan. Masooma who has convicted hundreds of men for violence against women, including rape, murder and torture says death threats began just days after the Taliban took control of her city and thousands of convicted criminals were released from prison.

The threats came from text messages, voice notes and calls from unknown phone numbers.

Masooma said “It was midnight when we heard the Taliban had freed all the prisoners from jail, Immediately we fled. We left our home and everything behind. Travelling by car out of the city, I wore a burka, so no one would recognise me. Fortunately, we made it past all the Taliban checkpoints.”

Shortly after she and her family left, her neighbours texted her to say several members of the Taliban had arrived at her old house. Months ago, Masooma was ruling over a case investigating a Taliban member for brutally murdering his wife. Upon finding him guilty, Masooma sentenced the man to 20 years in prison.

says Masooma.”I can still see the image of that young woman in my mind. It was a brutal crime. After the case was over, the criminal approached me and said: ‘When I get out of prison, I will do to you what I did to my wife. At the time I didn’t take him seriously. But since the Taliban took power, he has called me many times and said he has taken all of my information from the court offices. He told me: ‘I will find you and have my revenge.'”

Four other female judges in hiding named specific men whom they sentenced for murdering their wives. All judges say they have changed their phone number at least once due to receiving death threats.

In response to the accusations, Taliban spokesman Bilal Karimi told the BBC: “Female judges should live like any other family without fear. No one should threaten them. Our special military units are obliged to investigate such complaints and act if there is a violation.”

He also repeated the Taliban’s promise of a “general amnesty” for all former government workers across Afghanistan.

“Our general amnesty is sincere. But if some wish to file a case to leave the country, our request is that they do not do this and they stay in their country.”

During the mass release of prisoners, many criminals not associated with the Taliban were also released. Reacting to this Taliban spokesman, Karimi said:

“In the case of drug traffickers, mafia members, our intention is to destroy them. Our action against them will be serious.”

US Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad played a key role in pressing the Taliban to allow the departures, Reuters reported.

The departures were expected on Thursday, September 9, and an exact breakdown of how many US citizens and people from other nations will be on the flight has not been shared.

The official could not say whether these Americans and third-country nationals were among people who have been stranded for days in Mazar-i-Sharif 260 miles north of Kabul on charter flights that were barred from taking off.

Planes chartered to carry people out of Afghanistan have been stuck at Mazar-i-Sharif International Airport, with some organizers saying the State Department was not doing enough to facilitate their departure.

The criticism came after an email leak suggested that the agency prevented several private flights from leaving Afghanistan with U.S. citizens and Afghan allies on board.

On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had denied reports that the Taliban had blocked Americans attempting to fly out of a northern Afghan city. But he said that the militants had not allowed charter flights to depart because some people lacked valid travel documents. Reports had said that 1000 people, including US citizens had been stuck at Mazar-i-Sharif airport for days awaiting clearance for their charter flights to leave.

Mr Blinken had said that Washington had identified a “relatively” small number of Americans seeking to depart from Mazar-i-Sharif. He added: “It’s my understanding is that the Taliban has not denied exit to anyone holding a valid document, but they have said those without valid documents, at this point, can’t leave.”

The US secretary of state also said: “Because all of these people are grouped together, that’s meant that flights have not been allowed to go.”

An Afghan official at the airport in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif said that the would-be passengers were Afghans, many of whom did not have passports or visas, and thus were unable to leave the country. He said they had left the airport while the situation was sorted out.

A top Republican on the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee said that the aeroplanes’ passengers include Americans. He said the passengers were sitting on the planes, but the Taliban were not letting them take off, effectively “holding them hostage.”

Mr McCaul told Fox News there were six planes carrying American citizens and Afghan interpreters waiting at the airport.

He said “The State Department has cleared these flights and the Taliban will not let them leave the airport.  We know the reason why is because the Taliban want something in exchange”

Marina LeGree, founder and CEO of the NGO Ascend Athletics which works with Afghan girls and women, told the BBC that the number of planes could be higher than six, saying she has heard there could be as many as 1,000 people waiting to get out.

Her organisation has a group of 34 people who have been waiting to leave for six days, among them 19 Americans and two green cardholders. They are part of a larger organised evacuation under the auspices of the US government.

Ms LeGree revealed that the Taliban came into the place where people were being held and arrested people a couple of times. said she believed a dispute or negotiation between the Taliban and the Afghan airline Kam Air was holding up the flights.

She said “We’re just patiently waiting like everyone else and we’ve got people with families, there’s a three-year-old in our mix who has been hauled around for a week now. It’s just a worrying situation overall”

However, the Taliban has denied the claims, labelling them as propaganda. Spokesman of the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid told BBC “This is not true. Our Mujahideen have nothing to do with ordinary Afghans. This is propaganda and we reject it.”

The final days of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan were marked by a harrowing airlift at Kabul’s airport to evacuate tens of thousands of people, Americans and their allies who feared what the future would hold, given the Taliban’s history of repression, particularly of women. However when the last troops pulled out on August 30, many were left behind.

Among the 92 killed in Thursday’s suicide blast, claimed by Afghanistan’s Islamic State affiliate, were 13 U.S. service members, the most lethal incident for U.S. troops in Afghanistan in a decade.

According to the Pentagon, there were no civilian casualties from the strike and US forces were prepared for more attacks from ISIS even as they continue to airlift people out of the war torn Taliban controlled Afghanistan.

“Initial indications are that we killed the target. We know of no civilian casualties,” the U.S. military said in a statement, referring to the overnight drone strike

U.S. Central Command said the strike took place in Nangarhar province, east of Kabul and bordering Pakistan. It did not say whether the target was connected with the airport attack

According to Reuters, residents of Jalalabad city, capital of Nangarhar, said they heard several explosions from an air strike around midnight on Friday though it was not clear if the blasts were caused by a U.S. drone.

The White House said the next few days were likely to be the most dangerous of the U.S. evacuation operation that the Pentagon said has taken about 111,000 people out of Afghanistan in the past two weeks

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the United States believed there were still “specific, credible” threats against the airport after the bombing at one of its gates.

“We certainly are prepared and would expect future attempts,” Kirby told reporters in Washington. “We’re monitoring these threats, very, very specifically, virtually in real time.”

According to Taliban spokesperson, Zabiullah Mujahid, women should not go to work for their own safety a clear shift in the group’s messaging, as they earlier promised to be more open to women’s rights and freedoms after taking over power in Kabul.

Mujahid said the guidance to stay at home would be temporary, and would allow the group to find ways to ensure that women are not “treated in a disrespectful way” or “God forbid, hurt.”

He admitted the measure was necessary because the Taliban’s soldiers “keep changing and are not trained.”

“We are happy for them to enter the buildings but we want to make sure they do not face any worries,” he said.

“Therefore, we have asked them to take time off from work until the situation gets back to a normal order and women related procedures are in place, then they can return to their jobs once it’s announced.”

When last in power between 1996 and 2001 the militant group banned women from the workplace, stopped them from leaving the home except they are accompanied by men and forced them to cover their entire bodies.

The Royal Airforce plane, which also carried stranded Brits, touched down in Brize Norton in Oxfordshire early Wednesday morning .

People were pictured peeping through the plane windows and giving photographers on the tarmac below a thumbs-ups before disembarking the Voyager A330 aircraft.

The UK government say troops are rushing to evacuate around 6,000 people from Afghanistan.

UK Ministers on Monday announced plans to help Afghans fleeing the Taliban by giving some 20,000 refugees sanctuary in the UK over the coming years

The first flight of British nationals and embassy staff arrived at the base on Sunday night, and more flights carrying Afghan interpreters and other eligible locals are expected in the coming days.

Royal Navy Vice Admiral Sir Ben Key told Sky News: ‘How long have we got to do it? We don’t really know, so every day we are working as hard as we can to bring as many forward into this pipeline as we possibly can

‘Clearly there is a dynamic political situation running across the city. we make no assumptions about that other than we really can’t afford to pause and wait.’

Ghani fled the country on Sunday night to avoid bloodshed, as the Taliban closed in on the capital Kabul. He reportedly took with him four cars and a helicopter loaded with $169million in bags of cash – but was forced to leave some of the money behind as it would not all fit in the flight.

Earlier reports said Ghani had fled to Uzbekistan, citing Russian Embassy sources. It was also claimed that the former president had flown to Tajikistan, but diverted to Oman when officials in Dushanbe refused him permission to land.

Nikita Ishchenko, a spokesman for the embassy, said: ‘As for the collapse of the regime, it is most eloquently characterised by the way Ghani fled Afghanistan.

‘Four cars were full of money, they tried to stuff another part of the money into a helicopter, but not all of it fit. And some of the money was left lying on the tarmac’.

But the United Arab Emirates said today that it was hosting Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in Dubai ‘on humanitarian grounds’

The UAE said in a statement: ‘The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation can confirm that the UAE has welcomed President Ashraf Ghani and his family into the country on humanitarian grounds’.

Surprisingly, Afghanistan’s Vice President Amrullah Saleh stayed back in the country and retreated to his hometown in the Panjshir Valley – the only region the Taliban have not conquered. He is said to be massing troops to resist the militants.

The Afghan Embassy in Tajikistan, which reportedly refused Ghani refuge, has removed the former president’s picture and replaced it with Saleh.