Taliban press advance after capturing 2 major Afghan cities

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s immediate-advancing Taliban insurgents entered a western provincial capital, an official acknowledged Friday, hours after they captured the nation’s 2d and third supreme cities in a lightning advance dazzling weeks sooner than The US is decided to total its longest war.

The seizure of Kandahar and Herat marks the supreme prizes but for the Taliban, who have taken 12 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals as fragment of a weeklong blitz.

While the nation’s capital, Kabul, isn’t straight below chance but, the losses and the battles in other locations additional tighten the grip of a resurgent Taliban, who are estimated to now preserve over two-thirds of the nation and continue to press their offensive.

Thousands of Afghans have fled their homes amid fears the Taliban will again impose a brutal, repressive executive, all but taking away females’s rights and conducting public executions.

Peace talks in Qatar remain stalled, though diplomats are light assembly, because the U.S., European and Asian nations warned that any executive established by power would be rejected.

“We demand an instantaneous cease to attacks in opposition to cities, trudge a political settlement, and warn that a executive imposed by power will doubtless be a pariah insist,” acknowledged Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. envoy to the talks.

Fazel Haq Ehsan, chief of the provincial council within the western Ghor province, acknowledged Friday that the Taliban had entered Feroz Koh, the provincial capital, and that there modified into battling for the length of the metropolis. The Taliban within the period in-between claimed to have captured Qala-e Naw, capital of the western Badghis province. There modified into no official confirmation.

Mohammad Omer Sherzad, the provincial governor of southern Uruzgan province, acknowledged he had been approached by tribal elders hunting for a negotiated pullout but that executive forces are light battling the Taliban at some stage within the provincial capital of Tirin Kot.

The Taliban are moreover on the switch in Logar province, dazzling south of Kabul, where they claim to have seized the police headquarters within the provincial capital of Puli-e Alim to boot to a nearby jail. The metropolis is some 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Kabul.

Essentially the most recent U.S. protection power intelligence evaluate suggests Kabul would possibly perhaps well advance below rebel pressure within 30 days and that, if most recent developments preserve, the Taliban would possibly perhaps well assemble plump preserve watch over of the nation within about a months. The Afghan executive will doubtless be compelled to drag lend a hand to protect the capital and dazzling about a other cities within the upcoming days if the Taliban preserve momentum.

The onslaught represents a graceful collapse of Afghan forces after the US spent almost 20 years and $830 billion attempting to build a functioning insist after toppling the Taliban within the wake of the September 11 attacks. The advancing Taliban chase on American-made Humvees and lift M-16s pilfered from Afghan forces.

Afghan security forces and the chief don’t have any longer spoke back to repeated questions from journalists, as a substitute issuing video communiques that downplay the Taliban advance.

Invoice Roggio, a senior fellow at the Basis for Defense of Democracies, acknowledged the Afghan army has rotted from within due to corruption and mismanagement, leaving troops within the self-discipline poorly equipped and with minute motivation to combat. The Taliban, within the period in-between, have spent a decade taking preserve watch over of like a flash-witted swaths of the countryside, positioning themselves to immediate preserve key infrastructure and metropolis areas once President Joe Biden announced the U.S. withdrawal.

The self-discipline of transferring troops out to the provinces methodology the chief is liable to focal point all its efforts on defending the capital.

“Whatever forces are left or final which would possibly perhaps well well be within the Kabul position and the provinces spherical them, they’re going to be feeble for the protection of Kabul,” Roggio acknowledged. “Except something dramatically adjustments, and I don’t gaze how that’s conceivable, these provinces will remain below Taliban preserve watch over.”

In Herat, Taliban warring parties rushed past the Extensive Mosque within the historical metropolis — a constructing that dates to 500 BC and modified into once a smash of Alexander the Extensive — and seized executive buildings. Witnesses described hearing sporadic gunfire at one executive constructing while the leisure of the metropolis fell nonetheless below the insurgents’ preserve watch over.

Herat had been below militant attack for two weeks, with one wave blunted by the advent of warlord Ismail Khan and his forces. But on Thursday afternoon, Taliban warring parties broke thru the metropolis’s defensive traces and later acknowledged they had been as a lot as the impress.

Afghan lawmaker Semin Barekzai moreover acknowledged the metropolis’s drop, announcing that some officials there had escaped. It wasn’t straight positive what came about to Khan, who earlier had been described as below attack with his forces at a executive constructing.

In Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, insurgents seized the governor’s insist of business and other buildings, witnesses acknowledged. The governor and other officials fled the onslaught, catching a flight to Kabul, the witnesses added. They declined to be named publicly because the defeat has but to be acknowledged by the chief.

The Taliban had earlier attacked a jail in Kandahar and freed inmates interior, officials acknowledged.

Earlier Thursday, the militants raised their white flags imprinted with an Islamic proclamation of religion over the metropolis of Ghazni, which sits on a foremost north-south highway dazzling 130 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of Kabul.

In southern Afghanistan, the Taliban’s heartland, heavy battling continued in Lashkar Gah, where surrounded executive forces hoped to preserve onto the capital of Helmand province.

Nasima Niazi, a lawmaker from Helmand, criticized ongoing airstrikes concentrated on the position, announcing civilians doubtless had been wounded and killed.

“The Taliban feeble civilian homes to protect themselves, and the chief, without paying any consideration to civilians, implemented airstrikes,” she acknowledged.

With the Afghan air energy minute and in disarray, aviation monitoring records suggested U.S. Air Pressure B-52 bombers, F-15 fighter jets, drones and other airplane had been interested by the battling at some stage within the nation, consistent with Australia-essentially essentially based entirely security agency The Cavell Neighborhood.

U.S. Central Deliver has acknowledged conducting a number of airstrikes in most recent days, without providing particulars or commenting on the concerns over civilian casualties.

A United Worldwide locations agency warned that civilians in southern Afghanistan confronted minimize-off highways and mobile phone outages. It described support teams as being unable to uncover what number of folks had fled as intense battling and airstrikes continued there.

In Kabul and surrounding central provinces that remain below executive preserve watch over, the U.N.’s Build of job for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs acknowledged “the safety reveal remained unstable and unpredictable with elevated war and violence.”

Pakistan within the period in-between opened its Chaman border crossing for folks that had been stranded in most recent weeks. Juma Khan, the Pakistan border metropolis’s deputy commissioner, acknowledged the crossing modified into reopened following talks with the Taliban.

Even as diplomats met in Doha, Qatar on Thursday, the success of the Taliban offensive called into set apart a matter as to whether they would ever rejoin prolonged-stalled peace talks with the chief in Kabul. As a substitute, the team would possibly perhaps well advance to energy by power — or the nation would possibly perhaps well splinter into factional battling to find it irresistible did after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.

Faiez reported from Istanbul. Associated Press writers Joseph Krauss in Jerusalem, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this narrative.