A peaceful protest by dozens of women who marched through the streets of Kabul with slogans of “Bread, work and freedom” was attacked and dispersed by small arms fire in the air from the Taliban.

Photos and videos on social media show how Taliban forces fired warning shots and brutally attacked women to disperse their gathering in the city center in front of the Ministry of Education, just 5 minutes after they started their march.

“Taliban Forces Prevent Women’s Demonstrations in Kabul with Airstrikes.”

It’s just one of the legacies of our running away from #Afghanistan 🇦🇫 https://t.co/IoejmMtGNN

— David Patrikakos (@dpatrikarakos) August 13, 2022

The demonstrators held a banner reading “August 15 is a black day,” a reference to the date the Taliban took over Kabul in 2021.

“Justice, justice. We are tired of being ignored,” they shouted before their rally was violently dispersed.

The video shows a small group of women captured by the Taliban in a closed area.

“We are inside the pharmacy, they put us here,” the activist says in one of the videos.

The protesters also shouted slogans against discrimination against women.

Taliban in uniform and armed with rifles blocked the intersection in front of the protesters and opened fire in the air for several seconds. An AFP journalist found that one of them pretended to target the protesters and that the Taliban hit some of the women with rifle butts.

As one year of the Taliban regime approaches, women again took to the streets to denounce the Taliban’s restrictions on their rights to education, employment and freedom of movement.

Afghan women refuse to be silent. They continue to protest for their basic rights, a year after the Taliban came to power. pic.twitter.com/dKVCWLBjny

— Yalda Hakim (@BBCYaldaHakim) August 13, 2022

After returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban restricted the basic rights of women and repressed those who protested against it. No country has yet recognized the de facto Taliban government.