Looks like Taliban took Herat, the third largest city. It just started hitting the wires a few hours ago.
Afghan Taliban Seize Herat, Move Into Kandahar After Taking Ghazni
Yaroslav Trofimov, Alan Cullison and Ehsanullah Amiri
7-9 minutes
KABUL—The Taliban conquered western Afghanistan’s main city of Herat on Thursday and edged close to capturing the southern city of Kandahar, as Afghan police arrested the governor of the strategic Ghazni province for surrendering its capital city to the insurgents earlier in the day.
The
accelerating Taliban victories have demoralized Afghan government forces and
sown fears in Kabul that it is only a matter of days before the insurgents mount a large-scale attack on the nation’s capital, home to six million people.
Street-to-street fighting in Kandahar, the country’s second-largest city, reached key government buildings Thursday, according to witnesses. A security official in Kabul said it was possible the city would fall to the Taliban by the morning. South of Herat, the insurgents overran the Shindand air base, one of the biggest in the country, according to officials and videos on social media.
Footage shows Taliban fighters entering a number of provincial capitals in Afghanistan as the group rapidly gains ground and financial strength, further weakening government forces. WSJ’s Yaroslav Trofimov reports from Kabul, where pressure from the militants is growing. Photo Composite/Video: Michelle Inez Simon
“Unfortunately, the Taliban managed to get into [Herat] city with the help of their infiltrators,” said Abdul Razaq Ahmadi, an aide to Ismail Khan, a warlord who tried to organize a defense of Herat. “The police headquarters has been captured by the Taliban as all police forces left it before the arrival of the Taliban militants.”
By nightfall, other residents said, the insurgents took control of the rest of the city.
Thursday morning’s Taliban capture of Ghazni, which lies along the Kabul-Kandahar highway and serves as a gateway between the capital and insurgent strongholds in the south, significantly increased the threat to the Afghan capital.
An employee of the governor’s office in Ghazni said that Gov. Daud Laghmani simply handed over his office to a senior Taliban commander. “He gave a flower to the Taliban commander and congratulated him,” he said.
Pro-Taliban social-media feeds showed a video of Mr. Laghmani and a convoy of his SUVs being escorted out of the city by Taliban fighters and sent to the border of nearby Wardak province on the highway to Kabul. The Afghan Ministry of Interior said that Mr. Laghmani was arrested upon arriving in Wardak’s capital, along with his chief of staff and other provincial officials. “The governor made a deal with the Taliban. He basically gave the city to them,” said a senior police official.
Mr. Laghmani couldn’t be reached for comment.
Tens of thousands of people from provinces overtaken by Taliban forces have moved into the Afghan capital, some into camps like this one.
Photo: Victor J. Blue for The Wall Street Journal
The Taliban’s advances have cast a pall over Kabul, where many residents expressed surprise and shock at the speed of the Afghan government forces’ collapse while the U.S. still
maintains some troops in the country and conducts airstrikes.
In recent days, tens of thousands of people from conquered provinces flooded the capital, bringing with them tales of Taliban atrocities. The passport office was mobbed by hundreds of Afghans who tried to apply for documents that would allow them to leave. Some ATMs ran out of cash. Most embassies stopped issuing visas as they readied evacuation plans.
“The mood has changed,” said Abdullah Dost, who owns a mobile-phone shop in central Kabul. “People are afraid that the Taliban will destroy the city.”
In Kabul’s neon-lit Shahr-e-Naw neighborhood, where the main park was filled with recently arrived displaced people, car washer Habibullah Nabizada was fatalistic as he pondered the city’s fate. “I am sad about the Taliban coming here and closing girls’ schools, but we are helpless,” he said. “What can we do? They will take over Kabul sooner or later.”
People lined up at an ATM in Kabul on Thursday.
Photo: Victor J. Blue for The Wall Street Journal
Masih Esmati, a 24-year-old cook frying chapli kebabs, said he was angry with Americans for abandoning Afghanistan, and, like many Kabulis, feared the Taliban takeover. “Yet,” he added, “at the end of the day, this is our country, and we are the ones who have to defend it.”
Outside the Herat restaurant nearby, the favorite hangout of al Qaeda jihadists when Kabul was under Taliban rule in the 1990s, Nadim Qaderi, a recent recruit to the Afghan army, his head clean-shaven, dismissed fears of the city’s collapse.
“We will fight hard and we will defend Kabul. The Taliban won’t manage to come here,” he said.
Zalmay Nazari, a German-trained police trooper who escaped to Kabul this week from Kunduz, the northeastern city captured by the Taliban, burst out laughing. “That’s what we were saying too in Kunduz—we will never give up, we will never surrender, the Taliban will never take the city, and then they did,” he said, stirring his mango lassi. “The same thing will happen here.”
A makeshift camp for displaced Afghans in Kabul was crowded with vehicles on Thursday.
View attachment WorldOnAlert - This is HUGE! Taliban have seized 1000s of assault rifles, RPGs, pistols and t...mp4
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