The Taliban have "completely occupied" Afghanistan's second largest city

PATROL: Taliban fighters on a motorbike in the Afghan city of Ghazni on Thursday. The city is just one of a number of cities that have been hijacked by the Taliban in recent days. Photo: Gulabuddin Amiri / AP

The Taliban insurgency took control of Kandahar, the second largest city in Afghanistan. On Friday morning, the 15th provincial capital also fell under the control of the rebel group, without a fight.

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City after city fell under the control of the Taliban Islamist insurgent group. With only hours to go, Afghan authorities lost some of their most important cities: Herat, Ghazni and Qal’at Naw, all of which fell on Thursday.

Late Thursday night, the Taliban then made allegations that they had captured Kandahar. The messages reached the Associated Press via what they described as local sources.

“Kandahar has been completely occupied,” a Taliban spokesman told the BBC on Friday night.

According to the Associated Press, the sources will be anonymous, because the fall of the city was not yet acknowledged by the government. It is said that they said so and that the local authorities in the city managed to escape from the city with their entourage and escape by plane from the airport.

Hours before arrest: A member of the Afghan security forces stopped a car at a checkpoint in Kandahar on Thursday. A few hours later, the city was under Taliban control. Photo: M Sadiq/EPA

Early Friday morning, Afghan MP Gul Ahmad Kamin confirmed the fall of Kandahar and that the Taliban were now in control of the city, according to reports. CNN.

He also says that he and others fled to a military base at the airport, where they are waiting to be flown out of the area.

– Many government soldiers surrendered and the rest fled, says Kamen.

Pictures on social media showed Taliban fighters in the streets of Kandahar on Thursday. The day before, they were said to have stormed and taken over a prison in the city.

Facts about the war in Afghanistan

In October 2001, a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks, the United States and other Western countries helped a coalition of warlords and insurgents seize power in Kabul.

The background was that Al-Qaeda, which was behind the terrorist attack, had its base in the country then controlled by the Taliban.

The United States and NATO had more than 150,000 troops in Afghanistan at most. They finished their combat operations in 2014, and the last foreign soldiers will be out by September of this year.

Norway recently contributed just under 100 personnel to the NATO-led force. All Norwegian forces have now been withdrawn.

* 34 percent of Afghans lived below the poverty line in 2012, but the World Bank estimates that today it is 72 percent.

It is estimated that the war has killed at least 160,000 people since 2001, including at least 43,000 civilians.

*According to the United Nations, approximately 2.5 million Afghans are registered as refugees, but it is estimated that another 1.5 million Afghans live as unregistered refugees in Pakistan.

* In recent months, the Taliban have taken control of large parts of the Afghan countryside and border crossings with neighboring countries.

* In recent days, the Taliban also captured ten provincial capitals and besieged several others.

strategically important

The Taliban now controls most of northern Afghanistan, controlling more and more cities of strategic importance. And the last of them is Kandahar – the city in which the Taliban movement originated.

The city also has an international airport, and is an important center of commerce in the country.

– the worst is about to happen, Norway’s defense chief, Erik Kristoffersen, has warned At VG Thursday.

Abandoned: A market in Kandahar is much more empty than usual as a result of the conflict between Afghan forces and the Taliban in several places in the country. The photo is from Tuesday this week. Photo: M Sadiq/EPA

He fears that developments in the country will lead to a full-fledged civil war.

sesame islandAnother spokesman for the group says the large number of cities that have fallen under Taliban control shows that “the Afghan people welcome them”.

On Friday morning, it was also reported that the country’s 15th regional capital, Firoz Koh, had fallen. The city is located in the western Ghor province of the country.

According to local authorities, the Taliban took control of it without a fight.

The rebel group claims to have also taken control of the provincial capital, Qal’at Naw, in western Badghis province. This has not yet been confirmed by the Afghan authorities, Al Jazeera writes.

The Security Council considers condemning

Reuters news agency reported Friday evening that a statement condemning the progress of the Taliban in Afghanistan is being discussed in the UN Security Council. Estonia and Norway will summarize the draft statement.

– The United Nations declares that we do not support and will not support the establishment of any authority in Afghanistan that is entered through military force, as stated in the draft.

Watching: A Taliban fighter at the entrance to the police headquarters in Ghazni. Photo: AFP

Reuters also reported that US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken held talks with the foreign ministers of several partner countries – as well as with NATO President Jens Stoltenberg.

On Thursday, it also became known that Both the United States and Britain are sending additional forces to assist their citizens abroad. Almost all US Embassy staff have been evacuated.

600 British and 3,000 American soldiers were sent to the country to evacuate their ambassadors and diplomats in the country, among others.