TALIBAN...

“Taliban are intensifying the hunt-down of all individuals and collaborators with the former regime, and if unsuccessful, target and arrest the families and punish them according to their own interpretation of Sharia law,” said a report, dated Wednesday, by the RHIPTO Norwegian Center for Global Analyses.

“Particularly at risk are individuals in central positions in military, police and investigative units,” it added.

Tens of thousands of people remain to be evacuated ahead of the United States’ August 31 deadline to withdraw its troops from the country. The desperation has been captured in images and videos from the airport, where people clung onto a taxing American military plane as it took off, leaving several – including an Afghan national sportsperson – to plunge to their deaths.

On Thursday, officials in the UK told Sky News that people were passing their children, including infants, over barb wire airport fences in an attempt to get them to safety outside of the country.

A US defense official said about 5,700 people, including about 250 Americans, were flown out of Kabul aboard 16 C-17 transport planes. On each of the previous two days, about 2,000 people were airlifted.

In all, more than 18,000 people have been flown out of Kabul since the Taliban took over Afghanistan’s capital, a NATO official told Reuters.

A Taliban spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report, Reuters reported. Since seizing Kabul, the Taliban have sought to present a more moderate face to the world, saying they wanted peace and would not take revenge against old enemies.

The four-page report repro