Taliban advance into major Afghan metropolitan areas
KANDAHAR, Afghan-istan— The Taliban are ram ping up pressure on some of Afghanistan’ s larg-est cities, striking busy transit hub sand pushing front lines deep into urban areas for the first time since the militants were over thrown nearly two de-cades ago.
Taliban fighters launched rockets Saturday at airport sin Kandahar and Her at, two of the coun-try’ s largest cities and bus i-est economic centers. The attacks disrupted commer-cial travel, though flights in and out of Her at subse-quently resumed .
“There was a large blast, and the whole room started shaking ,” said Massoud Ah-mad Pashtun, the chief of Kandahar airport, who was present at the time oft heat-tack. He said three rockets landed within seconds of each other and damaged one of the run ways.
The attacks mark a po-tential turning point in the Afghan conflict. Previously, clash es were largely con-fined to the country’ s rural areas or smaller cities con-tested by the militants. Large-scale conventional attacks on Kandahar and Herat, the second-and fourth-largest cities in the country, have the potential to en danger millions more civilians.
Initial reports suggested the Kandahar rocket at-tack came from the eastern side of the city, where Tali-ban fighters have made ad-vances. Mr. Pas ht unsaid he feared more attacks in the coming days because of the deteriorating security situation and the removal of an American anti missile system that protected the air field before the with-drawal of U.S. forces from the southern province.
Gen. Ajmal Shinwari, a security forces spokesper-son, said at a news confer-ence on Sunday all troops were on high alert due to “the emergency situa-tions” in Kandahar and Herat. Hundreds more Af-ghan forces have been sent to the southern and west-ern provinces as reinforce-ments.
Taliban attacks in Kan-dahar province have been ongoing for months, but in recent days, the group be-gan pushing closer into the city center.
Front lines that crisscrossed largely agri-cultural suburbs just weeks ago now span dense ly popu-lated neighborhoods. Just a few hundred meters from a Taliban- held neighborhood on Kandahar’ s western edge, government forces have transformed a wed-ding hall and an opulent multistory home into make-shift bases .
“They watch us from those houses over there ,” said a command o officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. He pointed out a white Taliban flag visible just a few blocks away from a traffic circle.
The government sol-diers said they exchanged fire with Taliban fighters occasionally during the day, but it is at night when clash es grow more intense.
Thousands of civilians are being forced to flee their homes. Deeper inside Kandahar city, make shift camps have sprung up in empty lots.
Jalil Ahmad, 30, said his house was destroyed by a mortar attack and his ears were still ringing from the blast. He said a police unit took up a firing position on the roof of his home and Taliban fighters retaliated with a volley of mortars .“An entire wall col-lapsed on my family ,” he said .“We have never seen fighting like this in our area before .”
In Her at, Afghan special forces were deployed to the city on Sunday to help push back Taliban advances. Tal-iban fighters breached the city limits, and a United Na-tions compound was at-tacked, as clash es raged for hours. The U.N. condemned the attack. A Taliban state-ment described the destruc-tion as “regrettable,” saying the group remains commit-ted to protecting the U.N.