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Toddlers clutched smaller white Taliban flags with a photo of the Defense Minister Maulvi Mohammad Yaqoob on the bottom right corner.

Mourners were attending the funeral of Maulvi Ahmadi, the Taliban deputy governor of Badakhshan, who was killed on his way to work on Tuesday.

Egeland met the Kandahar deputy governor, Maulvi Hayatullah Mubarak, who he described as having “direct contact with and links” to the Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, who ordered the education and NGO bans.

A statement from Kandahar's information office said Deputy Governor Maulvi Hayatullah Mubarak had conveyed to Mohammed that the Taliban administration wanted to have a strong relationship with the world and asked that its leaders be removed from sanctions lists and its administration able to send a representative to the U.N.

Mission in Afghanistan, Potzel Markus, met Maulvi Abdul Salam Hanafi in the capital Kabul to discuss the ban, as well as other measures including barring women from universities.