Afghanistan’s Vice President: I am in the country and caretaker president

Afghanistan’s Vice President has said he is still in the country and should be recognised as the “legitimate caretaker president”.

Amrullah Saleh said on Tuesday he is in charge after the Western-backed president Ashraf Ghani fled as Taliban insurgents took the capital Kabul.

Saleh told a security meeting chaired by Ghani last week he was proud of the armed forces and the government would do all it could to strengthen resistance to the Taliban.

But the country fell to the Taliban in days, rather than the months foreseen by US intelligence.

Taking to Twitter, Mr Saleh wrote: “According to the explicit provision of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, in case of absence, escape or death of the President, the First Vice President will be the acting President.

“I am inside the country and I am legally and legitimately in charge of this position / chair. I am consulting with all the leaders of the country to strengthen this position.”

In a series of tweets on Tuesday, Mr Saleh said it was “futile” to argue with U.S. President Joe Biden who has decided to pull out US forces.

Saleh, whose whereabouts were unknown, said that he would never "under no circumstances bow" to “the Talib terrorists.”

He said he would “never betray” Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance who was assassinated by two al-Qaeda operatives just before the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

It comes as a video of desperate Afghans trying to clamber on to a US military plane was circulating on social media.

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