Afghanistan crisis live updates: 'Afghan evacuee flights halted from two key bases'

The UN rights office on Friday said that the Taliban response to peaceful marches in Afghanistan has been increasingly violent, with authorities using live ammunition, batons and whips that have resulted in at least four protester deaths. Ravina Shamdasani, UN rights spokesperson, told a UN briefing in Geneva that it had received reports of house-to-house searches for those who participated in the protests. Journalists have also faced intimidation and one of those who was beaten in custody was verbally threatened with a beheading, she added.

The Taliban have closed the bank accounts of some officials from the former Ashraf Ghani government, most of them who fled Afghanistan after the August 15 fall of Kabul, the media reported. The announcement was made on Thursday by Anaamullah Samangani, a member of the Taliban Cultural Commission, but he did not reveal the names of the affected former officials, TOLO News reported. "Accounts of some officials from the previous government, most of whom fled the country, have been closed," Samangani was quoted as saying.

Evacuation flights have resumed for Westerners, but thousands of at-risk Afghans who had helped the United States are still stranded in their homeland with the US Embassy shuttered, all American diplomats and troops gone and the Taliban now in charge. With the United States and Taliban both insisting on travel documents that may no longer be possible to get in Afghanistan, the plight of those Afghans is testing President Joe Biden's promises not to leave America's allies behind. An evacuation flight out of Kabul on Thursday, run by the Gulf state of Qatar and the first of its kind since US-led military evacuations ended Aug. 30, focused on US passport and green card holders and other foreigners.

The United Nations development agency says Afghanistan is teetering on the brink of "universal poverty" which could become a reality in the middle of next year unless urgent efforts are made to bolster local communities and their economies. It said the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has put 20 years of steady economic gains at risk.

Afghan staff of the United Nations are being increasingly subjected to harassment and intimidation since the Taliban came to power last month, the UN special envoy on Afghanistan Deborah Lyons said on Thursday. Lyons told the Security Council that UN premises had largely been respected, although there were some exceptions. "We are ... increasingly worried by the growing number of incidents of harassment and intimidation against our national staff. We will continue to do everything possible to support our staff and keep them from harm's way," Lyons said.