Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said on Sunday that the Taliban had won and that he had left the country to avoid bloodshed as the movement entered the presidential palace in the capital, Kabul.
And he added - in a post on Facebook, in his first statements since his departure - that he left to avoid clashes with the Taliban that would have put the lives of millions of Kabul residents at risk.
Ghani called on the Taliban movement to protect women and different ethnicities to win the hearts of Afghans, stressing that the people are in a state of fear of the future.
He considered that the Taliban won the war but lost the hearts of the people, and said that the movement planned to remove him from power and attack Kabul and its residents.
Ghani did not reveal his whereabouts, but the Turkish Anadolu Agency said he had arrived in the Sultanate of Oman.
This comes at a time when the events of Afghanistan are accelerating throughout the day to make a turning point in the political and security scenes with the entry of Taliban fighters into Kabul and their control of the presidential palace.
The head of the reconciliation committee, Abdullah Abdullah, said earlier that Ghani left the country and "implicated it and the people in this situation," adding, "The people will judge the former president (Ghani) and God will hold him accountable."
In a separate statement, a senior official in the Afghan Foreign Ministry said that the president had left, but it was not known which country he had gone to.
A senior official in the Ministry of the Interior had said - earlier - that Ghani had left for Tajikistan.
Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, acting defense minister, said Ghani had "tied our hands behind our backs and sold the country" and left the country.