Desperation deepened around Kabul's airport on Saturday with evacuation operations in chaos and U.S. President Joe Biden warning he could not predict the outcome of one of the "most difficult airlifts in history."

The Taliban's co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar arrived in Kabul on Saturday for talks with fellow members of the group and other politicians on establishing a new Afghan government. 

The Vatican's newspaper is calling on the international community to welcome Afghan civilians fleeing the Taliban, expressing incredulousness "that before deciding to abandon the country no one thought through such a foreseeable scenario or did anything to avoid it."

In a front-page article in the Friday edition of L'Osservatore Romano, deputy editor Gaetano Vallini said the West was obliged to urgently remedy the situation with concrete action and welcome refugees to avoid a "catastrophic humanitarian emergency."

Taliban fighters tortured and killed members of an ethnic minority in Afghanistan after recently overrunning their village, Amnesty International said, fueling fears that they will again impose a brutal rule, even as they urged imams to push a message of unity at the first gathering for Friday prayers since the capital was seized.

Terrified that the new de facto rulers would commit such abuses, thousands have raced to Kabul's airport desperate to flee following the Taliban's stunning blitz through the country. Others have taken to the streets to protest the takeover — acts of defiance that Taliban fighters have violently suppressed.

Greece's prime minister and Turkey's president are to speak on Friday evening to discuss "the latest developments in Afghanistan," the Greek prime minister's office announced, as both countries raise concerns about a potential major influx of people fleeing Afghanistan after the Taliban's takeover.

Greece has repeatedly said it will not allow a repetition of 2015, when hundreds of thousands of people crossed to Greek islands from the nearby Turkish coast before heading through Greece and the Balkans north toward more prosperous countries in the European Union.

The Taliban are going house-to-house searching for opponents and their families, according to an intelligence document for the U.N. that deepened fears Friday Afghanistan's new rulers were reneging on pledges of tolerance. 

After routing government forces and taking over Kabul on Sunday to end two decades of war, the hardline Islamist movement's leaders have repeatedly vowed a complete amnesty as part of a well-crafted PR blitz.

As if Haiti's 7.2 magnitude earthquake, a tropical storm and the coronavirus pandemic weren't enough, the temblor damaged the only medical oxygen plant in the southern part of the country.

The building that housed the oxygen concentrator machines that the region depended on partially collapsed, and the machines were upended. The Etheuss company is run by the a family famous for their vetiver perfume oils plant in the city of Les Cayes, one of the areas hardest hit by Saturday's earthquake.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin are set to hold talks in Moscow on Friday amid the crisis unfolding in Afghanistan and as Russia's treatment of opposition politician Alexei Navalny and Ukraine remain a source of ongoing tension between the two leaders' countries.

Other challenging issues that are certain to play a role in the meeting are a gas pipeline between Russia and Germany opposed by the United States, the repression of dissent in Belarus, and allegations that the Belarusian government has channeled migrants into Latvia, Lithuania and Poland with the aim of destabilizing the European Union.

The United States is struggling to pick up the pace of American and Afghan evacuations at Kabul airport, constrained by obstacles ranging from armed Taliban checkpoints to paperwork problems. With an Aug. 31 deadline looming, tens of thousands remained to be airlifted from the chaotic country.

Taliban fighters and their checkpoints ringed the airport — major barriers for Afghans who fear that their past work with Westerners makes them prime targets for retribution. Hundreds of Afghans who lacked any papers or clearance for evacuation also congregated outside the airport, adding to the chaos that has prevented even some Afghans who do have papers and promises of flights from getting through.

Taliban fighters have manned checkpoints around Kabul's airport as concerns built they were blocking Afghans from reaching evacuation flights, with the United States demanding safe passage.