Taliban celebrate victory as last US troops leave Afghanistan

Celebratory gunfire resounded across Kabul today as Taliban fighters took control of the airport before dawn, after the withdrawal of the last US troops, marking the end of a 20-year war that left the Islamist militia stronger than it was in 2001.

Shaky video footage distributed by the Taliban showed fighters entering the airport after the last US troops flew out on a C-17 aircraft a minute before midnight, ending a hasty and humiliating exit for Washington and its NATO allies.

"It is a historical day and a historical moment," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a news conference at the airport after the troops left. "We are proud of these moments, that we liberated our country from a great power."

An image from the Pentagon taken with night-vision optics showed the last US soldier to step aboard the final evacuation flight out of Kabul - Major General Chris Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division.

America's longest war took the lives of nearly 2500 US troops and an estimated 240,000 Afghans, and cost some US $2 trillion ($2.834 trillion).

Although it succeeded in driving the Taliban from power and stopped Afghanistan being used as a base by al Qaeda to attack the United States, it ended with the hardline Islamist militants controlling more territory than during their previous rule.

Those years from 1996 to 2001 saw the Taliban's brutal enforcement of a strict interpretation of Islamic law, and the world watches now to see if the movement forms a more moderate and inclusive government in the months ahead.

A contingent of Americans, estimated by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken as fewer than 200, and possibly closer to 100, wanted to leave but were unable to get on the last flights.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab put the number of UK nationals in Afghanistan in the low hundreds, following the evacuation of some 5,000.

General Frank McKenzie, commander of the U.S. Central Command, told a Pentagon briefing that the chief US diplomat in Afghanistan, Ross Wilson, was on the last C-17 flight out.

"There's a lot of heartbreak associated with this departure," McKenzie told reporters. "We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out. But I think if we'd stayed another 10 days, we wouldn't have gotten everybody out."

As the US troops departed, they destroyed more than 70 aircraft, dozens of armoured vehicles and disabled air defences that had thwarted an attempted Islamic State rocket attack on the eve of their departure.