Taliban attack Afghanistan’s second airport

“Three rockets were fired at the airport and two damaged the runway,” airport director Masud Pashtun told AFP. “For this reason, all flights to and from the airport have been canceled,” he explained.

Since May, taking advantage of the almost total withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan, the Taliban have launched an offensive with which they have seized vast rural areas.

Government forces offer little resistance and barely control major lines of communication and provincial capitals, some of which are surrounded by insurgents.

In recent weeks, the Taliban have reached the outskirts of Kandahar, the cradle of the Islamist movement and the second most populous city after I accept.

Thousands of residents have fled neighboring areas in recent weeks to seek refuge in the city.

The Taliban have also come very close Herat, the third largest city in Afghanistan, with 600,000 inhabitants in the west of the country, and they entered Lashkar Gah (200,000 inhabitants), capital of the southern province of Helmand, neighboring Kandahar.

A hypothetical fall of Kandahar would be a disaster for the Afghan authorities and the morale of its troops, casting doubt on Kabul’s ability to stop its enemies.

The Taliban made Kandahar the epicenter of their regime when they ruled Afghanistan (1996-2001), imposing an ultra-harsh version of Islamic law.

In Herat, fighting continued overnight “on the outskirts of the city,” spokesman for provincial governor Jailani Farhad said on Sunday. “The airstrikes have slowed the advance of the Taliban,” he added.

The Afghan Ministry of Defense announced the arrival of hundreds of special forces soldiers “to step up offensive operations and destroy the Taliban”.

On Sunday, the UN Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) called on the Taliban to “investigate and respond to the attack” on their offices in Herat, which were hit by rocket and gunfire on Friday.

“The perpetrators of this attack which killed an Afghan guard must be held responsible,” said Unama, denouncing “further violence on Saturday at its base in Herat”, located near a bridge disputed by both sides these days.

In Lashkar Gah, “there is fighting inside the city and we have called for the deployment of special forces,” Ataullah Afghan, head of the Helmand provincial council, told AFP.

On Saturday, a small private hospital with ten beds, where the Taliban took refuge, was destroyed in the fighting.