The Taliban on Monday had seized control of at least three provincial capitals in Afghanistan, as the militants pressed on in their offensive while American forces finalized their pullout from the war-torn country.
The fighters said Sunday they had captured Sar-e Pul, in Sar-e Pul province in northern Afghanistan and Taleqan, in the northeastern province of Takhar. NBC News was not immediately able to confirm the claims, but The Associated Press spoke to Afghan officials who said both cities had fallen.
Gen. Abdul Qadir Ashna, a former governor of Sar-e Pul now in the Afghan capital Kabul who is in touch with regional officials, told NBC News that Sar-e Pul had fallen to the Taliban, and that officials in Taleqan city had retreated from the provincial capital, surrendering it to the militants.
The gains would add two more provincial capitals to the Taliban’s rapidly growing list as U.S. forces complete their withdrawal. The group captured its first provincial capital Friday in Nimroz Province. Over the weekend, the insurgent fighters claimed control of Sheberghan, the capital of the northern Jawzjan province, as well as the city of Kunduz, a major Afghan commercial hub.
It remains unclear how long the group would be able to maintain control of its urban gains. Mirwais Stanekzai, a spokesperson for Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry said Monday that Afghan forces were still fighting to defend Kunduz, Sheberghan and Sar-e-Pul cities. He said Afghan security forces had made “good achievements” in Kunduz city.
The rapid fall of provincial capitals deals a heavy blow to the crumbling Afghan government forces who have struggled to contain the Taliban’s raging offensive as U.S. and NATO troops withdraw from the country.
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The Taliban recently started laying siege to provincial capitals after taking rural administrative districts. The capitals it claims to have captured since Friday stretch from the northeast of the country, round anti-clockwise to the southwest next to the border with Iran.
The insurgents’ offensive has driven thousands of people from their homes to seek refuge, from both the fighting and the prospect of the Islamist regime that ruled the country before 2001 being re-imposed. While in power the Taliban enforced a hardline version of Islam, and women’s lives in particular were strictly controlled.
As the Taliban turn their sights toward Afghan cities there have also been reports of assassination attempts of government officials in the capital, Kabul. On Saturday, the U.S. and British embassies in Kabul repeated a warning to citizens still there to leave “immediately” as the security situation deteriorated.
A State Department spokesperson condemned the Taliban offensive Sunday but said Afghan forces far outnumber the militants and that the U.S. would continue to support government forces.
The U.S. toppled the Taliban government in 2001 after the group sheltered Osama bin Laden, the architect behind the 9/11 attacks that triggered the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and America’s longest war.
Biden said last month that the U.S. military mission in the country will conclude Aug. 31, earlier than initially announced. The conflict has cost the lives of around 2,300 U.S. troops. From 2001 to 2018, some 58,000 Afghan military and police were killed in the violence, according to a study by Brown University.
Between 2009, when the United Nations began documenting the impact of the war on civilians, and 2019, about 28 civilians have been killed or injured every day — more than 100,000 casualties.
Ahmed Mengli and Mushtaq Yusufzai contributed.