Taliban capture regional capital as battles surge
KABUL — Taliban militants have captured the capital of one of Afghanistan’s western provinces, Afghan officials said Friday, a symbolic milestone in the insurgents’ relentless march to retake power in the country.
Zaranj, the provincial capital of Nimruz on the AfghanistanIran border, has collapsed and is now in the hands of the insurgents, according to Rohgul Khairzad, the deputy governor of Nimruz, and Haji Baz Mohammad Naser, the head of the provincial council.
It is the first provincial capital to be captured by the insurgent group since the Biden administration said it would completely withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan in the coming weeks. The Taliban have besieged a host of such cities for weeks and the likely fall of Zaranj, a city of 160,000 people, is the Taliban’s first major breakthrough.
The city’s collapse occurred on the same day that a senior government official was assassinated in Kabul, the capital. It also came as the insurgents pressed hard into other provincial cities, in a day of bleak news for the government.
“All the people are hiding in their houses in fear of the Taliban,” said KhairulNisa Ghami, a member of the provincial council. “The Taliban captured the city without any fighting.”
Naser said the government had failed to send reinforcements to Zaranj and that officials had decided to abandon the city to avoid casualties.
Situated in the remote southwestern corner of the country, Zaranj is Afghanistan’s main hub for illegal migration. For decades, a steady flow of Afghans displaced by conflict and poverty have flocked to the city’s smugglerowned hotels and brokered deals to cross through the mountains into Iran.
The seizure of Zaranj is a symbolically significant development in the Taliban’s campaign as they have moved away from targeting rural districts to focus on attacking provincial capitals.
The 215th Corps of the Afghan National Army is responsible for security in both Zaranj and Lashkar Gah, the capital of neighboring Helmand province, which has been under siege for several days. The 215th Corps’ leadership had shifted its focus to defending Lashkar Gah, leaving Zaranj vulnerable to capture.
The Taliban also took responsibility for the assassination Friday of a senior government official in Kabul. Dawa Khan Meenapal, head of the government’s media and information center, was gunned down in a targeted attack.
Fighting also continued around the major western city of Herat, in Kandahar city in the south and in other provincial capitals.