Major Afghan city of Kunduz falls to Taleban

KUNDUZ, AFGHANISTAN (AFP) - The Taleban said on Sunday (Aug 8) that it had captured the key Afghan city of Kunduz and the northern capital of Shar-e-pul.

The Taleban has also seized Taloqan city in northeastern Takhar province on Sunday, a security source and residents told AFP, the third provincial capital to fall to the insurgents in one day.

"We retreated from the city this afternoon, after the government failed to send help," the security source said. Meanwhile, a resident of the city said: "We saw the security forces and officials leaving the city in convoys of vehicles."

A lawmaker from Sar-e-Pul told AFP that the Taleban had entered the centre of the city and "street-to-street fighting is ongoing".

"Kunduz has fallen; the Taleban has taken all the key installations in the city," an AFP correspondent in Kunduz said.

The fall of the northern city would be a major blow for the central government, which has largely abandoned fighting in the countryside to defend urban centres against Taleban attacks.

"Fierce street-to-street fighting is ongoing in different parts of the city," Mr Amruddin Wali, a member of the Kunduz provincial council, told AFP.

"Some security forces have retreated towards the airport."

The Taleban has taken two provincial capitals since Friday, but Kunduz would be the most significant to fall since the insurgents launched an offensive in May as foreign forces began the final stages of their withdrawal.

On Friday, the Taleban seized its first provincial capital, Zaranj in Nimroz, and followed it up a day later by taking Sheberghan in Jawzjan.

"(Taleban fighters) have reached the main square of the city. Aircraft are bombing them," said Mr Abdul Aziz, a Kunduz resident reached by phone.

"There is total chaos."

Fighting was also reported on the outskirts of Herat, in the west, and Lashkar Gah and Kandahar in the south.

The pace of Taleban advances has caught government forces flat-footed, but they had some respite late on Saturday after US warplanes bombed Taleban positions in Sheberghan, the Jawzjan province capital seized earlier in the day.

"US forces have conducted several air strikes in defence of our Afghan partners in recent days," Major Nicole Ferrara, a Central Command spokesman, told AFP in Washington.

Sheberghan is the stronghold of notorious Afghan warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, whose militiamen and government forces were reported to have retreated to the airport.

Dostum has overseen one of the largest militias in the north and garnered a fearsome reputation fighting the Taleban in the 1990s - along with accusations that his forces massacred thousands of insurgent prisoners of war.

Any retreat of his fighters would dent the government's recent hopes that militia groups could help bolster the country's overstretched military.

On Friday, Zaranj city in Nimroz fell "without a fight", according to its deputy governor, becoming the first provincial capital to be taken.

The government has so far not commented on the fall of the provincial capitals, other than saying they would soon be retaken.

That has been a familiar response to most Taleban gains of recent weeks, although government forces have largely failed to make good on promises to retake dozens of districts and border posts.

The withdrawal of foreign forces is due to be completed at the end of this month, ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks on the United States that sparked the invasion that toppled the Taleban.