Updated
Kabul, Aug 15 (IANS): Negotiations are going on in the Afghan Presidential Palace to transfer power to the Taliban.
The head of High Council for National Reconciliation Abdullah Abdullah is said to be mediating the process, Afghan media reported.
Sources have also said that Ali Ahamd Jalali will be appointed as head of the new interim government.
Meanwhile, the acting Ministers of Interior, and Foreign Affairs, in separate video clips, assured Kabul's people would be secure as they are protecting the city along with international allies.
Earlier, the Taliban in a statement, assured residents of Kabul not to be afraid as they are not intended to enter the Afghan capital militarily and there will be a peaceful movement towards Kabul.
The Taliban readied its forces on outskirts of the Afghan capital from all sides on Sunday as panicked civilians prepared for the armed group's takeover of Kabul nearly 20 years after it relinquishing power in an American-led assault.
Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said fighters were remaining on the capital's outskirts as negotiations took place.
"Our forces have not entered Kabul city, and we just issued a statement saying that our forces will not enter Kabul city," he told Al Jazeera from Doha, where peace talks are taking place.
"We are talking and awaiting a peaceful transfer – a transition of the capital city."
Sirens could be heard along with sporadic gunfire in Kabul. Multiple helicopters were flying above the city centre dropping flares.
The Taliban said it has no plans to take the Afghan capital "by force".
"Negotiations are under way to ensure that the transition process is completed safely and securely, without compromising the lives, property and honour of anyone, and without compromising the lives of Kabulis," a Taliban statement said.
"The Islamic Emirate instructs all its forces to stand at the gates of Kabul, not to try to enter the city," a spokesman for the Taliban tweeted, although some residents reported fighters peacefully entered some outer suburbs.
Panicked workers fled government offices. Thousands of civilians now live in parks and open spaces in Kabul itself, fearing the future.
The chief of staff to President Ashraf Ghani on Twitter urged the people of Kabul: "Please don't worry. There is no problem. The situation of Kabul is under control."
Afghan Interior Minister Abdul Sattar Mirzakwal said there would be a "peaceful transfer of power" to a transitional government after the Taliban ordered its fighters to hold back from entering Kabul.
"The Afghan people should not worry... There will be no attack on the city and there will be a peaceful transfer of power to the transitional government," he said in a recorded speech.
There was no immediate word on the situation from Ghani. A palace official said he was in emergency talks with US peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and top NATO officials.
President Ashraf Ghani, close aides have left Afghanistan
Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani has left the country after the Taliban entered Kabul on Sunday.
According to the sources, his close aides have also left the country along with him, Afghan media reported.
Earlier in the day, acting Defence Minister Bismillah Mohammadi said that the President has handed the authority of solving the crisis in the country to political leaders.
Mohammadi said that a delegation will travel to Doha on Monday for talks on the country's situation.
The delegation includes key political leaders, including Younus Qanooni, Ahmad Wali Massoud, Mohammad Mohaqiq among others.
Sources close to the Taliban said that it has been agreed that Ghani will resign after a political agreement and hand the power to a transitional government, reports said.
Abdullah Abdullah, the head of the High Council for National Reconciliation, posted a video on Facebook confirming that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has left the country.
He asked people to keep calm and for the Afghan security forces to cooperate in ensuring security.
Abdullah asked the Taliban to allow some time for talks before entering the city of Kabul. Taliban forces have been seen within the city but most insurgents remain massed in the city's outskirts, the Guardian reported.
Ghani has left Kabul for Tajikistan, a senior Afghan Interior Ministry official said.
Asked for comment, the President's office said it "cannot say anything about Ashraf Ghani's movement for security reasons".
A representative of the Taliban, which entered the capital Kabul earlier on Sunday, said the group was checking on Ghani's whereabouts.
Afghans have said that they seek a political settlement and an end to the ongoing violence in the country.
Afghans intrigued at 'being sold out'
Residents in Herat and Kandahar say they cannot believe how quickly both cities fell after the Taliban's weeks-long effort to take two of Afghanistan's largest cities, Al Jazeera has reported.
"They literally sold us out, there was no government resistance," one female resident of Kandahar told Al Jazeera, fighting back tears late on Thursday evening.
"I never imagined that Kandahar would be taken so easily," she said echoing a sentiment made by Afghans across the country when the Taliban was blazing through the districts since it stepped up an offensive in May after the United States began the final withdrawal of its forces from the country.
A supporter of a local anti-Taliban militia known as an "uprising force" in the western city of Herat agreed.
"The fact that all these places are being handed over, Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif will be next," he said referring to two of the last remaining big cities still in government hands, the report said.
In the week since the Taliban took its first provincial capital, no government official, including President Ashraf Ghani, has publicly admitted to losing a single province.
For many people, the back to back fall on Thursday of Kandahar and Herat, the nation's second and third largest cities, was a turning point in an increasingly violent battle between the forces of the Kabul government and the Taliban.
"I still can't believe how this happened," said one government worker from Herat who currently resides in Kabul.
There was also curiosity on the first official day of Taliban control in Herat and Kandahar.
One resident in Herat said that early on Friday morning, people went out to "see the Taliban". Online videos showed crowds of people gathered in the streets to catch a glimpse of a group they had not seen in the city in 20 years.
In Kandahar, a young man in his 20s said the group was in a celebratory mood, firing bullets into the air to signal its success.
But a journalist in Kandahar said the celebrations did not last long, and the group soon started to harass residents and raid houses.
"They went from house-to-house asking who lived there, and if so-and-so who was part of the security forces or the government was there," the journalist said. He added that they came to his family's house thinking a government deputy lived there.
He is now hiding in another part of the city; afraid he too will be targeted for working in a shop near a foreign forces base before working with the media.
These searches have brought back memories not only of the Taliban's five-year rule, but the communist practice of raids into people's homes searching for any evidence of what the Marxist governments of the 1970s would consider incriminating.
"My uncle informed us to hide anything which provokes them because they checked their house and keep checking other houses," said a young man in Kandahar who says his family is simply trying to keep from drawing attention to themselves.
Kandahar residents speaking to Al Jazeera said the raids mostly focused on people suspected to be part of the government, but that people living nearby potential targets also feared having their homes searched.
"I feel they have very strong intelligence and an actual list," said one resident who did not leave their home in the city for fear of provoking the group's ire.
Another Kandahari youth put the group's actions much more simply: "They are the same Taliban I've been cursing all my life."
In Herat, the story was eerily similar. After a brief celebration, the armed group started to look for people reportedly named on the lists of influential persons and government workers.
A politician who lives in Kabul, away from the family in Herat, said she fears the group will find her family in the city and target them, the report said.
"All night, all I could think about was our house, my father, my mother, what if they are taken because of me?"
As the group's actions in the cities continue to mirror what was occurring in the districts in weeks prior, even those who want to flee are unable to. Flights in and out of both cities have been grounded, with no date for a resumption in sight.
By the evening, the Taliban was back in joyous spirits as it celebrated the triumph in Kandahar by filling the air with the shots of celebratory gunfire once again, the report said.