CNN’s chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward and her team were reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, when they were confronted by armed Taliban fighters on Wednesday.
The team was near the airport, surrounded by desperate Afghans and their families hoping to survive an evacuation flight, and Taliban fighters opening fire in an attempt to control the crowd.
Ward told CNN after the incident, “There were Taliban fighters coming at us all around us, a man was shouting to cover my face or he wouldn’t talk to me.”
The team saw a man “carrying this giant makeshift whip – it was a bicycle lock that was basically split in two, so the heavy metal lock was in the middle,” she said. “And he’s using it to get in. Anyone who goes out of his way gets in his way.”
At one point, a Taliban fighter took off his AK-47 rifle and pushed through the crowd, the gun raised in the air as it was about to begin firing, prompting the CNN team to run for cover. .
Taliban confronts CNN: But the “most horrifying moment” came when two Taliban fighters watched a CNN producer filming the video from their phones, and charged the team, raised pistols and prepared to attack.
“They were ready to whip him,” Ward said. When another Taliban fighter intervened and told others that Ward’s team were journalists with permission to report, they were allowed to pass.
Crowd gathered at the airport: Before the confrontation, Ward and the CNN team spoke to desperate and angry Afghans waiting outside the airport in Kabul, some of whom said they had been abandoned and lied to by US leaders.
Ward said, “I covered all kinds of crazy situations. It was devastation. it was crazy. It was impossible for a common citizen, even if they have the paperwork… there is no one to process for the people, not a coherent system.”
The Taliban are stationed outside the airport, sometimes firing in the air and controlling the crowd.
“It’s so heartbreaking,” Ward said. “all the people[was]Coming up to us with his papers and passport saying, ‘Please, I worked at Camp Phoenix. I was in this camp. I was a translator. Help me get in, help me get to America.”
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