Taliban Fighters Threatened to Pistol-Whip Clarissa Ward’s Cameraman: ‘This is Mayhem’

As CNN’s Clarissa Ward continues to bravely cover the chaotic situation in Afghanistan, she reported that Taliban fighters threatened to attack her cameraman.

Ever since Afghanistan fell to the Taliban over the weekend, Ward has provided astonishing reporting from Kabul as she documented the chaos, the desperation, and even questioned the Taliban directly over the oppressiveness they are expected to enforce in their new regime.

Ward filed multiple reports on Wednesday to CNN’s New Day, but in her latest, she told John Berman that she and her team ran into an “extremely chaotic” situation as she tried to report near Hamid Karzai international airport. She recalled that she was swarmed by people desperately seeking aid, but there were also Taliban fighters around them, and two of them threatened to pistol-whip Ward’s producer.

The most frightening moment for our team came when our producer Brent Swails was taking some video on his iPhone. Two Taliban fighters just came up with their pistol ands they were ready to pistol whip him. We had to intervene and scream and it was actually another Taliban fighter who came in and said ‘No, no, no. Don’t do that, they’re journalists’…I’ve covered all sorts of crazy situations. This was mayhem. This was nuts.

Ward went on by describing it as an “impossible” situation for Afghan citizens hoping to flee, saying “no way they’re running that gauntlet. No way they’re going to be able to navigate that. It’s very dicey. It’s very dangerous, and it’s completely unpredictable…To me, it’s a miracle that more people haven’t been very seriously hurt.”

Watch above, via CNN.