{"id":36221,"date":"2021-08-31T12:15:20","date_gmt":"2021-08-31T03:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/aug\/31\/gunfire-fills-the-air-in-kabul-as-taliban-celebrate-airport-takeover"},"modified":"2021-08-31T12:15:20","modified_gmt":"2021-08-31T03:15:20","slug":"gunfire-fills-the-air-in-kabul-as-taliban-celebrate-airport-takeover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=36221","title":{"rendered":"Gunfire fills the air in Kabul as Taliban celebrate airport takeover"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Taliban spokesman says Afghanistan has \u2018gained complete independence\u2019 as fighters enter hangars occupied by US forces hours earlier<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/live\/2021\/aug\/31\/afghanistan-live-news-kabul-taliban-biden-final-us-flight-military-forces-leave-airport-islamic-state-latest-updates\">Afghanistan \u2013 live updates<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2021\/aug\/30\/pentagon-kabul-drone-strike-islamic-state\">Report: after 20 years, last US flight departs Kabul<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As the last US military transport aircraft <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2021\/aug\/30\/pentagon-kabul-drone-strike-islamic-state\">lifted off from Kabul<\/a> airport on Monday night, marking the end of two decades of American troops in Afghanistan, celebratory gunfire rang out the capital as Taliban fighters revelled in the end of America\u2019s longest war.<\/p>\n<p>Just two weeks earlier, Taliban fighters had taken Kabul and toppled the government without force as President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. It was a rise to power so swift that it had taken the US and even Taliban leadership by surprise.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/aug\/31\/gunfire-fills-the-air-in-kabul-as-taliban-celebrate-airport-takeover\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Taliban spokesman says Afghanistan has \u2018gained complete independence\u2019 as fighters enter hangars occupied by US forces hours earlierAfghanistan \u2013 live updatesReport: after 20 years, last US flight departs KabulAs the last US military transport aircraft &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":804,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46,61,44,473,47,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-south-and-central-asia","category-taliban","category-us-military","category-us-news","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/804"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36222,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36221\/revisions\/36222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}