thousands of afghans are desperately trying to make it to the kabul airport. their only hope to escape the taliban but millions more are faced with no way out. the cofounder of afghanistan s only all girls boarding school tells cnn she s burning her students records to protect them. there is a whole generation of women and girls getting their first glimpse of what life under the taliban is like. 17-year-old ferkunda is one of them and joins me from inside kabul. i m really, really happy to speak with you and really want to hear from you. we all do. thank you for joining us. appreciate it. i thank you for hearing our words and i m happy to talk to you. ferkunda i know you had to
well, they show something different. chaos and desperation at the kabul airport. the video you re about to see was shot early today local time. there is tear gas, people screaming, gunshots. and i must warn you, it s hard to watch. [crying] [ gunshots ]. unfortunately, we don t know what happened to the woman and two children on the ground. joining me now, cnn military analyst general wesley clark. he s the former nato supreme ally commander. very difficult and disturbing to watch not knowing what is happening. general clark, does that look like precision to you? i ll tell ya, laura, our
pointed out, the u.s. embassy is now saying don t simply come to the airport. wait until you re instructed to head to the airport because of the security situation around hamid karzai international. that to the pictures we ve seen, the taliban essentially patrolling the perimeter. we ll see how this plays over the next few days because there aren t that many days to get this mission over with and done. oren liebermann, thank you. cnn international correspondent clarissa ward has given us a heartbreaking look at the chaos and devastation in afghanistan. yes, as she and her crew prepare to leave that harrowing journey to the airport. here s clarissa s report. reporter: after three weeks in afghanistan, we joined the crowds at kabul airport. now the only way out of the country.
but it was an incredibly tragic tale. so when we look at this where are the americans? think about the people outside the airport. there is 40,000 there. if you ask how many people want to get out from under the taliban and are going to try to do it at the cost of their own life, it may be a million. 2 million. they will be there. when we look at this in a very narrow sense, we got to realize what the implications of this are. these people ahave seen the taliban before. it been ugly and the taliban are much different today, well, that has to be proven. it does. in fact, it was the old saying trust but verify. we get to see any verification of that and general clark, you talked about the strategy, right? we re learning that the u.s. military used helicopters to evacuate 169 americans from a hotel near the kabul airport. so are u.s. forces going to need
cnn s team and root from kabul to qatar with a crowd of some 400 afghan nationals desperate to flee afghanistan. but, the journey began at the airport in kabul where as david was mentioning, clarissa ward filed this report. reporter: after three weeks in afghanistan, we joined the crowds at kabul airport, now the only way out of the country. there is a huge block here. lots of cars. hundreds of people wait in the blistering heat hoping for a flight out. so we just managed to get into the airport compound and i have to say, it was pretty intense. just like this crush of desperate people and screaming children and women and babies and, yeah, it s not every day you see desperation like that.