Taliban fighters caught among Afghanistan’s primary cities on Sunday as the militants took on the withdrawal of U.S. forces and collapsing resistance to sweep into provincial capitals throughout the nation.
The fall of the city of Kunduz, capital of the northern province of the very same name, might deal a substantial blow to collapsing Afghan federal government forces after the militant group caught 2 other local centers in as numerous days.
“The Taliban has captured Kunduz after heavy fighting in which the two sides suffered casualties. We left Kunduz but fighting is still going on for control on the airport,” stated Abdul Ahad Torial Kakar, a member of the Kunduz provincial council. Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid likewise informed NBC News the militants had actually caught the city, which federal government authorities had actually left their posts.
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Kunduz is Afghanistan’s around sixth-largest city and an essential industrial center. It’s a tactical crossroads with simple access to much of the nation’s north along with the capital, Kabul, about 200 miles away.
The fall of the city, at the heart of a significant farming area near Tajikistan, follows insurgent fighters on Saturday declared control of Sheberghan, the capital of the northern Jawzjan province. That was less than 24 hours after Zaranj, the heart of Nimroz province in southwest Afghanistan, ended up being the very first provincial capital to be up to the militants because U.S. forces started withdrawing from the nation.
The Taliban just recently started to lay siege to provincial capitals after taking smaller sized administrative districts.
The militants started an aggressive offensive in May and have actually advanced through the nation at a speed that has actually even shocked a few of the fighters themselves.
Recently, the group stated it had actually caught majority of Afghanistan’s area, consisting of tactical border crossings.
That has actually driven thousands out of their houses to look for haven, from both the combating and the possibility of the hard-line Islamist routine that ruled the nation prior to 2001 being reimposed.
While in power, the Taliban imposed a stringent variation of Islam that made ladies and women virtually unnoticeable in public life.
With the group resurgent, a variety of assassinations has actually struck Afghanistan, primarily targeting popular ladies, reporters, judges and others battling to sustain a liberal way of living in the nation.
The U.S. Air Force continues to assist the Afghan flying force’s battle of Taliban targets in southern Helmand and Kandahar provinces as Afghan security forces attempt to avoid a Taliban takeover.
The Taliban took Kunduz for around 2 weeks in 2015 prior to withdrawing in the face of a NATO-backed Afghan offensive. The insurgents pressed back into the town hall a year later on, briefly raising their flag prior to slowly being eliminated once again.
On Saturday, the U.S. and British embassies in Kabul duplicated a cautioning to people still there to leave “immediately” as the security scenario degraded.
“The continued Taliban offensive does nothing but lead to more bloodshed,” a State Department representative stated Friday. “If the Taliban continue down this path, they will be an international pariah without support from the international community or even the people they say they want to govern.”
The U.S. fell the Taliban routine in 2001 after the group protected Osama bin Laden, the creator of al Qaeda and the mastermind of the Sept. 11 horror attacks that activated America’s longest war.
President Joe Biden stated last month that the U.S. military objective in the nation will conclude Aug. 31, earlier than at first revealed.
The dispute has actually cost the lives of around 2,300 U.S. soldiers. From 2001 to 2018, some 58,000 Afghan military and authorities were eliminated in the violence, according to a research study by Brown University.
Rhea Mogul reported from London, and Mushtaq Yusufzai reported from Peshawar, Pakistan.
The Associated Press contributed.
