Squeals of delight from young children fill the air as they enjoy the thrills of the Ferris wheel, bumper cars and a small rollercoaster at an amusement park in central Kabul.

Their fathers sit on the rides with them, or look on, taking photos – rare moments of joy in Afghanistan where the news is often so bleak.

But mothers are now denied the right to share in the memories the children here are making. Women are banned from visiting parks in Kabul by the hardline ruling Taliban.

When we visit, dozens of members of the group are enjoying the rides.

But the closest women, including us, can get to the park is a restaurant overlooking it. Women were also recently barred from swimming pools and gyms in the capital.

It’s expected the rules will be extended across the country.

As the Taliban further limit what they can do, Afghan women and girls fear what could come next.

Some say these moves don’t affect most of the country, because for a majority of the people right now, an evening out is a luxury they cannot afford.

For many Afghan girls, though, it’s not about the scale of the impact, but the symbolism of the move – and what it reveals about the intent of the Taliban since they seized power in August 2021.

“Every day, as girls in Afghanistan, we wake up to new restrictions. It’s like we are just sitting and waiting for the next one,” one female student says. She’s not being named to protect her.

“I was lucky I finished secondary school before the Taliban came. But I’m scared now that universities might also be closed for women. My dreams will be over.”

She recently took the university entrance exam and was disappointed to find that the subject she wanted to study – journalism – was no longer available for women, part of another set of restrictions the Taliban recently imposed.

“I can’t describe how hard it is. Sometimes you feel like screaming loudly,” the student says, frustration evident in her voice. “I feel hopeless.”

With spaces for women shrinking in Afghanistan, some are trying to find ways to counter the Taliban’s clampdown.

Activist Laila Basim has co-founded a library for women. It has thousands of books in different languages on diverse subjects.

“With this we want to show the Taliban that Afghan women won’t stay silent and our second goal is to expand the culture of reading books among women, particularly those girls who are deprived of education,” she says.

• Who are the Taliban?

She’s determined to raise her voice against the men running her country, and has participated in multiple protests since last year.

“We are not afraid of death or that the Taliban will threaten our families. What we are terrified of, is being omitted from society,” she says.

She sees the increasing restrictions on women as worrying and sad.

“It makes me so upset to think of all the freedoms we have lost. The people of other countries are exploring Mars, and here we are still fighting for such basic rights,” she says.

Their words and actions suggest a hardening of the Taliban’s stance on women, and anyone critical of their policies. It challenges the more moderate image they have attempted to portray since they seized power last year.

“One day we might be told that women can’t go out of their homes any more,” the young female student said. “Everything is possible in Afghanistan.”

Disappointment with the international community is also evident among Afghan women.

“The world has turned its back on us,” Laila Basim says. “Powerful people all over the world are supporting the women of Iran, but not those of Afghanistan.

“What happens to us doesn’t even make front page news. We feel broken and forgotten.”

At least 10 people have been killed after a bomb blast hit a religious school in northern Afghanistan, the ruling Taliban regime has said.

The blast took place in Aybak in the Samangan province and left many more injured, a spokesperson for the interior ministry told the BBC.

But the death toll remains uncertain, and hospital officials told the AFP news agency that 16 died in the blast.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The blast is said to have occurred as people were leaving congregational prayers, and a doctor at the local hospital said most of the victims were students at the school.

“All of them are children and ordinary people,” one doctor was quoted by AFP as saying.

Interior ministry spokesperson Abdul Nafee Takkur said the Taliban’s security forces were investigating the attack, and vowed to “identify the perpetrators and punish them for their actions”.

Afghanistan has been rocked by dozens of blasts since the Taliban seized power last year, mostly claimed by the local offshoot of the Islamic State group.

The son of militia leader Stewart Rhodes spent years plotting to help his family escape from his father’s control. Now that the elder Rhodes faces decades in prison, the rest of the family is rebuilding their lives.

The time had come. It was a dreary February day in 2018. Dakota had it all planned out.

His mother and five younger siblings were in the truck – some of them crouched out of sight on the floor.

They’d bundled into it as much as they could and made up an excuse – ostensibly they were heading to the trash dump just off the main highway, slick with black ice and crusted snow.

But just as they started to pull away, Dakota’s father burst out the door of their remote cabin in the mountains of northwest Montana.

Dakota and his mother Tasha stiffened. The leader of the Oath Keepers militia had dominated their lives until that moment. Tasha and Stewart had been married for nearly 25 years, and she was familiar with his manic periods. He’d been up all night on a tear – working out, listening to music, practising Filipino stick fighting, pacing the floor.

It was a pattern of manic activity, Dakota said, that was familiar throughout years of emotional abuse and heightened paranoia.

Would he now stop them from fleeing? Had he noticed his favourite gun was missing? Would he question why John-Boy, the family dog, was along for the ride to the dump? Dakota gripped the wheel while Tasha looked down at her daughters, hidden under the windows, their eyes opened wide.

• WATCH: ‘We didn’t know if we would get out alive’

“Hey,” Rhodes growled. “Pick up some steak on your way back.”

Dakota and Tasha murmured assent, and drove off towards the highway without a backwards glance.

China’s former leader Jiang Zemin, who came to power after the Tiananmen Square protests, has died at 96.

State media said he had died just after 12:00 local time (04:00 GMT), in Shanghai, on Wednesday.

Jiang presided over a time when China opened up on a vast scale and saw high-speed growth.

His death comes as China sees some of its most serious protests since Tiananmen, with many demonstrating against Covid restrictions.

A Chinese Communist Party statement said he died of leukaemia and multiple organ failure.

It added that he was recognised “as an outstanding leader with high prestige” and “a long-tested Communist fighter”.

• OBITUARY: Jiang Zemin

State media outlets, including the Global Times and the Xinhua news agency, turned their websites black and white in tribute.

Jiang rose to power after the bloody 1989 crackdown on protesters in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, which led to China being ostracised internationally.

The event sparked a bitter power struggle at the top of the Communist Party between hard-line reactionaries and reformers.

It led to Jiang, who had originally been seen as a plodding bureaucrat, being elevated to high office. He was chosen as a compromise leader, in the hope he would unify hardliners and more liberal elements.

Under his stewardship, a formidable economy was forged, the Communists tightened their grip on power, and China took its place at the top table of world powers.

He oversaw the peaceful handover of Hong Kong in 1997, and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 which intertwined the country with the global economy.

But political reforms were also put to one side and he crushed internal dissent while pursuing a hardline stance on Taiwan. He was criticised for the heavy-handed crackdown on the religious sect Falun Gong in 1999, which was seen as a threat to the Communist Party.

• WITNESS HISTORY: China’s Crackdown on Falun Gong
• TIANANMEN SQUARE: What happened in the protests of 1989?

He was also keen to ensure that his position within the Communist Party was secure, and came up with his own political ideology – the Three Represents theory – in an attempt to modernise the party.

During his time in power, Jiang sought to strengthen ties with the US, visiting the country several times and offering then-president George W Bush co-operation in Washington’s “war on terror” following the 9/11 attacks.

In a country not known for its flamboyant leaders, he was seen as having a more colourful personality than his successors. He memorably crooned Elvis Presley at a global summit, and went for a swim off the Hawaiian coast.

In his later years he withdrew from government and was rarely seen in public. But even as he became less conspicuous, online he became an unlikely subject of viral internet memes.

Many Chinese affectionately caricaturised his signature large spectacles, and likened his appearance to a toad. Young fans called themselves “toad worshippers”.

Jiang’s successors as president, Hu Jintao – who was conspicuously removed from the CCP conference last month – and Xi Jinping, are scheduled to attend his funeral, according to a letter released by the state backed Global Times.

But the letter added that foreign leaders and governments will not be invited to the event. The funeral committee said the decision was in keeping with what it called “China’s practice”.