Taliban fighters with rocket launcher filmed using gym after storming palace

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Disturbing footage shows Taliban militants inside a gym after breaching Kabul’s presidential palace.

The insurgents took over the capital without a fight on Sunday, August 15, with thousands still trying to flee the country.

Over the weekend, the heavily-armed fighters were photographed behind President Ashraf Ghani’s desk.

They announced they would use it as a base to restore the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

A video has since emerged of Taliban members at the Arg’s gym.

In it, they’re seen using elliptical machines and doing bicep curls – as one stands around with a rocket launcher.

Other Taliban members were filmed on bumper cars in a Kabul amusement park.

The clip shows people laughing behind the camera as smiling troops – some carrying guns – crash into each other.

The Taliban have claimed there will be a “peaceful transfer of power”.

Spokesman Suhail Shaheen earlier told the BBC that “there will be no revenge on anyone”.

However, its members have already been accused of killing hundreds of people in Kandahar.

Tadin Khan, former police chief of the southern province, told The Times that security forces or government employees had been dragged from their homes and murdered.

  • Prince Harry and Meghan left 'speechless' after seeing Taliban chaos in Kabul

Many of them were killed in the town of Spin Boldak, on the border with Pakistan.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the organisation had received “accounts of mounting human rights violations against the women and girls of Afghanistan”.

He added: “We cannot and must not abandon the people of Afghanistan.”

During their regime in the 1990s, the Taliban carried out brutal public executions and severely curtailed women’s rights.

On Tuesday, Augusta 17, the US and Western allies began evacuating diplomats and civilians from Kabul again after flights were halted.

US forces took charge of the airport – their only way to fly out of Afghanistan – on Sunday.

The number of civilians had thinned out, a Western security official at the airport told Reuters, a day after chaotic scenes in which U.S. troops fired to disperse crowds and people clung to a US military transport plane as it taxied for take-off.

At least 12 military flights had taken off, a diplomat at the airport said. Planes were due to arrive from countries including Australia and Poland to pick up their nationals and Afghan colleagues.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called on the Taliban to allow all those who wanted to leave the country to leave.

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