LIVE: Three shot dead in anti-Taliban protests, former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in UAE

The United Arab Emirates on Wednesday said it has accepted Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his family 'on humanitarian grounds'. Ghani fled Afghanistan on Sunday as the Taliban approached Kabul. The statement carried by the UAE’s state-run WAM news agency on Wednesday did not say where Ghani was in the country. It quoted the country’s Foreign Ministry in a one-sentence statement.

Reports from Reuters say that three people have been confirmed dead at anti-Taliban protests in Jalalabad. The news outlet cited witnesses to events when calculating the death toll.

Meanwhile, the Afghan embassy in Tajikistan has asked Interpol police to detain former President Ashraf Ghani, Hamdallah Mohib and Fazal Mahmood Fazli on charges of stealing public wealth, so that funds could be returned to Afghanistan, Afghan news channel TOLOnews reported.

A Taliban commander and senior leader of the Haqqani Network militant group, Anas Haqqani, has met former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai for talks, a Taliban official said on Wednesday, amid efforts by the Taliban to set up a government.

The Taliban have blown up the statue of a Shiite militia leader who fought against them during Afghanistan’s civil war in the 1990s, according to photos circulating on Wednesday, sowing further doubt about their claims to have become more moderate.

Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said the Taliban should be judged on their actions, warning countries against “prematurely or bilaterally” recognising the Islamist hardliners. “We will judge this regime based on the choices it makes and by its actions rather than by its words, on its attitudes to terrorism, to crime and narcotics, as well as humanitarian access and the rights of girls to receive an education,” he told parliament.