Interviewing the Taliban: 'Still now I am terrified'

Armed forces minister James Heappey has said that British soldiers in Afghanistan are facing “extraordinary circumstances” at Kabul airport. UK troops were deployed to Kabul airport to aid the evacuation of people from the country, following the Taliban’s total takeover of Afghanistan. Mr Heappey told the BBC that while soldiers are helping with the evacuation,…

Hamas is willing to have a ceasefire but Israel is abstaining from accepting it, the secretary general of the Palestinian National Initiative has said. Dr Mustafa Barghouti told BBC World News that a ceasefire meant both sides would not shoot, but if Israel continued to conduct airstrikes it could not expect the Palestinians to stop…

Egypt is using all the diplomatic tools available to it so that a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Palestinian militants can be reached, the country’s ambassador to the UK, Tarek Adel, has said. “There are casualties that are falling on both sides and this is not time to blame one side or the other, things…

A national lockdown is not a solution to the current Covid-19 crisis in India, Gopal Agarwal, a spokesman for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has told BBC World News. The states and districts of India had been given “a free hand” to deal with the pandemic, he said. And the level of infection varied…

Covid vaccines are less effective against the variant of the virus identified in India, research has shown. But they would still prevent very seriously illness, University of Cambridge microbiologist Prof Ravindra Gupta said. He told BBC World News: “The virus can potentially infect people who have already been vaccinated, albeit with reduced severity – so…

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