Hundreds of Indian officials and citizens are awaiting
evacuation from Kabul after Taliban’s takeover of capital city Kabul on Sunday
marked the insurgent group’s seizure of power two decades after being ousted in
wake of the post-9/11 US invasion of the country.

India has kept a fleet of C-17 Globemaster military
transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force on standby for the purpose, news
agency PTI reports.

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Plans have been finalised for emergency evacuation as New
Delhi does not want to risk the lives of its personnel at the Indian Embassy in
Kabul and citizens working in the country.

India is yet to make an official comment on the
situation.

Taliban declared the war in Afghanistan to be over, a day
after seizing control of the presidential palace. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his close aides have already fled the country,while the United States said it has evacuated all
its embassy personnel to the airport.

The US-trained Afghan security forces have offered little
or no resistance to Taliban as the group seized control of around 25 of 34
provincial capitals including cities such as Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif
and Jalalabad.

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Minister of Defence General Bismillah Mohammadi took to
Twitter last night to “curse Ghani and his gang” for leaving the
country.

Ghani defended the decision as a measure to “prevent a flood of bloodshed.”

Earlier, he said a delegation will travel to Doha, Qatar,
on Monday for talks on the current situation.

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Abdullah Abdullah, the chairman of Afghanistan’s High
Council for National Reconciliation, also criticized  Ghani’s flight from the country.

Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai said that a
coordinating council comprising himself, Abdullah and former Mujahideen leader Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar will work for transfer of power.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the
Taliban’s onslaught and the imminent fall of Kabul as “heart-wrenching
stuff”.

“We went to Afghanistan 20 years ago with one
mission, and that mission was to deal with the folks who attacked us on 9/11.
And we have succeeded in that mission,” Blinken told CNN.