Australian forces won’t leave Kabul airport to help citizens blocked at Taliban checkpoints

Australian forces will not leave Kabul airport to help Australians blocked at Taliban checkpoints in the captured Afghan capital, after some were injured in the chaos on the road to the airport overnight.

Despite the new militant regime promising “safe passage” to those who wanted to flee, Airport Road leading to Kabul’s international airfield, the only practicable way out of Afghanistan since the country fell to the Taliban, has been fortified with Taliban checkpoints, where gunmen are refusing to let people pass.

“There are people in their thousands, as you’ve seen, crowding around the entrances to the airport, and there have been unfortunately injuries as well and we have had to address some of those amongst our passenger cohorts, too,” the foreign minister, Marise Payne, said.

“It is dangerous … it is very complex and it is very uncertain.”

Hundreds of Australian nationals, visa holders, former interpreters for Australian forces, and guards who protected Australia’s embassy, are still trying to get flights out of the country.

The Guardian reported Thursday on widespread chaos and violence at and around the airport. At least one Afghan who had served as an interpreter for Australian military has been shot trying to get to the airport. Australian nationals, and Afghans holding visas to travel to Australia, were beaten by Taliban, hit with rifles and whipped.

Australia has increased its presence on the ground in Kabul, including more defence force personnel, and officials from the foreign and home affairs departments.

But Australia’s operations are confined to the airport, which is under the control of the US military. The rest of Kabul, and almost all of Afghanistan, is held by the Taliban, after their stunning capture of the capital on the weekend.

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The prime minister, Scott Morrison, said the Australian defence force would not go outside Kabul airport.

“Operations ... beyond the airport are not possible,” he said.

“They are not able to be undertaken in any way by the Australian defence forces – to do so would put them at great risk with no commensurate benefit. These are options we obviously consider and we have considered.”

Morrison said Australia was working with the US and UK “to make that process of entering into the airport as orderly as you possibly can in a chaotic situation like this, but it is very very difficult.”

“The biggest challenge is for people to be able to get to that airport. There are larger numbers now, we are advised, who are starting to come into Kabul, there are multiple checkpoints that are in place, the Taliban leadership is now moving into the city.”

Video from Airport Road on the southern – civilian – side of the airport showed a mass of people pushing forward, then halted by regular rounds of gunfire.

In some videos, men, women and children can be seen cowering as Taliban fire over crowds forcing them back. Others show Taliban whipping people who plead to be allowed past.

In another video, a child is passed over the airport wall to a US soldier.

Afghan-Australian Leeda Moorabi said her brother-in-law and his sister, also Australian citizens, have been trying to reach Kabul airport for days, but have been forced back by the militants manning checkpoints.

The Guardian has chosen not to name the pair for their safety. Moorabi said the checkpoints leading to the airport were unpredictable and violent.

“The crowds got worse … night fell and he was still stuck and things got more violent … a seven-year-old was shot ... and died right in front of him … he watched children being trampled on and he was helpless.

“If he bent over to pick them up the crowd would have trampled on him … he is traumatised.

“He was beaten by the Afghan security personal at the airport … He showed them his Australian passport and they rejected him claiming it’s fake.”

Pressed on the possibility of providing a military escort to help people get into the airport, Morrison said that was “not a matter that is considered viable”.

“That is the direct advice that I have from our defence forces,” Morrison said, conceding the inability to provide such escorts was “obviously concerning and distressing” for people stranded in the capital.

“We’re dealing with the Taliban, so I’m not making any assumptions and I’m moving as quickly and as safely as we possibly can to get as many people out as fast as we can.”

Morrison confirmed 162 people bound for Australia had been evacuated from Kabul this week, either on Australian or UK-run military flights, to be transferred through Australia’s middle east base in the UAE.

The first 94 evacuees arrived in Perth early Friday morning, to begin a fortnight’s quarantine.

Morrison said further flights were planned for days ahead, but these were contingent on weather and slots on Kabul airport’s single runway.

“The situation in Kabul does remain chaotic.”

The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said, in negotiations with the Taliban, the militant group had promised “they are prepared to provide the safe passage of civilians to the airport, and we intend to hold them to that commitment”.

Sullivan said keeping open routes to the airport was an “hour-by-hour issue … It’s something we are clear-eyed about and very focused on holding the Taliban accountable to follow through on its commitment.”

The Australian government has not yet said whether it will recognise the new Taliban-led government, saying only that trust needs to be earned.

Morrison, who discussed the Afghanistan crisis with British counterpart Boris Johnson on Thursday night, said of the Taliban: “We know their form. I’ll make decisions, the government will make decisions based on their form.”