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BERLIN - Army Chief Warrant Officer 3 Jason Lacrosse, Joint Multinational Readiness Center Falcons instructor pilot, Hohenfels, Germany, reunites with German soldiers here Sept. 11, 2012 at the Berlin Air Show. Three of the German soldiers were rescued by Lacrosse and fellow soldiers in Afghanistan and the fourth was a member of the Joint Tactical Air Command that was involved in the operation. From left to right: unknown, Hauptfeldwebel Ralf Rönckendorf, unknown, Army Chief Warrant Officer 3 Jason Lacrosse, Stabsgefreiter Maik Mutschke

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Updated Aug. 8, 2021, 10:35 a.m. ET

Live Updates: Taliban Seize 2 Afghan Capital Cities in a Day

The fall of Kunduz, a major northern hub, and another city, Sar-i-Pul, is a devastating blow to the Afghan government just weeks before the final withdrawal of U.S. troops.

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban seized two Afghan provincial capitals on Sunday, including the strategically crucial northern city of Kunduz, officials said, escalating a sweeping insurgent offensive that has claimed four regional capitals in just three days.

The rapid fall of Afghan cities — including Kunduz and Sar-i-Pul, another capital in the north — comes just weeks before U.S. forces were set to complete a total withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is a crucial challenge for President Biden, who in recent weeks has insisted the American pullout would continue despite the Taliban’s advances.

After sweeping through the country’s rural areas, the insurgents’ military campaign has shifted to brutal urban combat in recent weeks. They have pushed into the edges of major cities like Kandahar and Lashkar Gah in the south and Herat in the west.

The strategy has exhausted the Afghan government’s forces and overwhelmed the local militia forces that the government has used to supplement its own troops, a move reminiscent of the chaotic and ethnically divided civil war of the 1990s.

Kunduz, the capital of a province of the same name, is a significant military and political prize. With a population of 374,000, it is a vital commercial city near the border with Tajikistan, and a hub for trade and road traffic.

“All security forces fled to the airport, and the situation is critical,” said Sayed Jawad Hussaini, the deputy police chief of a district in Kunduz city.

Clashes between government forces and Taliban fighters were continuing in a small town south of the city, where the local army headquarters and the airport are situated, security officials said.

“We are so tired, and the security forces are so tired,” Mr. Hussaini said. “At the same time we hadn’t received reinforcements and aircraft did not target the Taliban on time.”

Security forces, who had retreated to the town earlier in the morning, began an operation to flush Taliban fighters out of the city on Sunday evening, according to security officials.

As Kunduz was collapsing on Sunday morning, the Taliban also seized Sar-i-Pul, the capital of another northern province of the same name, after heavy fighting in the area in recent days, officials said.

“Taliban are walking in the streets of the city. Local residents are terrified,” said Sayed Asadullah Danish, a member of the Sar-i-Pul provincial council. Provincial officials had taken shelter in an army base on the outskirts of the city, where clashes were continuing, he added.

In the two preceding days, the Taliban had taken two other provincial capitals: Sheberghan, the capital of Jowzjan Province in the north, and Zaranj, the capital of Nimruz Province on the Afghanistan-Iran border.

The Taliban briefly seized Kunduz in 2015 and again in 2016, gaining control of a province for the first time since American forces invaded in 2001. Both times, Afghan forces pushed back the insurgents with help from American airstrikes. Kunduz is also where an American gunship mistakenly attacked a Doctors Without Borders hospital in 2015, killing 42 people.

Since the U.S. withdrawal began, the Taliban have captured more than half of Afghanistan’s 400-odd districts, according to some assessments. Their attacks on provincial capitals have violated the 2020 peace deal between the Taliban and the United States. Under that deal, which precipitated the American withdrawal from the country, the Taliban committed to not attacking provincial centers like Kunduz.

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Originally posted by ThankGod4Sig:
sounds like the same thing from the fall of Saigon.....

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Originally posted by Creeping_Death:
Thank you for that photo Banshee…I was in the same task force as Chief Lacrosse, back west when the Good Friday fight took place. Quite an event, and for as crummy as it was it certainly improved relations between US Soldiers and the Ansbach people when we came home.

Very sad to see the current events unfolding around AFG.

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Originally posted by wcb6092:
Over the weekend a second provincial capital has fallen to the Taliban, this time in the north of Afghanistan, just days after the southern Nimruz province which borders Iran fell reportedly with barely any resistance from US-trained Afghan national forces.

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Originally posted by sigmonkey:
So, the Soviets going to go back for a second helping?

Or maybe the Chicoms would like to go test all their newfangled toys.