Peace deal on table as Taliban take key town, Kabul in reach
Afghan forces abandoned Herat, the country’s third biggest city, on Thursday, hours after insurgents seized Ghazni, a key district capital close to Kabul, in the latest of a series of lightning offensives that has seen the Taliban take more than half the country in a week.
The government has effectively lost most of north, south and west Afghanistan, and is left holding the capital and a dwindling number of contested cities also dangerously at risk.
As the rout unravelled, Kabul handed a proposal to Taliban negotiators in Qatar offering a power-sharing deal in return for an end to the fighting, according to a member of the government’s team in Doha, who asked not to be named.
After being under siege for weeks, government forces on Thursday pulled out of Herat -an ancient silk road city near the Iranian border -- and retreated to a district army barracks.
“We had to leave the city in order to prevent further destruction,” a senior security source from the city told AFP. A Taliban spokesman tweeted that “sol
KABUL:
NEW DELHI: India on Thursday ruled out immediate closure of its embassy in Afghanistan amid the rapid deterioration of the security situation and said it continued to be engaged with all stakeholders to work for a comprehensive ceasefire and a political settlement.
Meanwhile, the Indian embassy in Kabul on Thursday again advised Indians in Afghanistan to return home in view of the deteriorating security situation, saying three engineers who remained at a project site not controlled by Afghan forces had required an “emergency air rescue”.