{"id":6926,"date":"2021-08-08T12:04:36","date_gmt":"2021-08-08T12:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/box5917.temp.domains\/~iriacom\/\/news\/?p=6926"},"modified":"2021-08-08T12:04:36","modified_gmt":"2021-08-08T12:04:36","slug":"taliban-capture-4-provincial-capitals-including-kunduz-in-3-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/taliban-capture-4-provincial-capitals-including-kunduz-in-3-days\/","title":{"rendered":"Taliban capture 4 provincial capitals including Kunduz in 3 days"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Kunduz, the key city in northern Afghanistan, fell to the Taliban<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Taliban fighters have captured the strategic Kunduz city and the northern Sar-e-Pul city in the latest advances in a series of\u00a0strategic gains\u00a0in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<p>The capital of Kunduz is a significant military and political gain for the Taliban as the province is a key commercial hub near the border with Tajikistan.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll security forces fled to the airport, and the situation is critical,\u201d said Sayed Jawad Hussaini, the deputy police chief of a district in Kunduz city.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Mohammad Hussein Mujahidzada, a council member from Sar-e-Pul province, told media that &#8220;Taliban surrounded an army battalion on the outskirts of the city. All other parts of the city are under Taliban control.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>With these two cities, the Taliban have now reportedly seized four provincial capitals in three days.<\/p>\n<p>On Friday, Taliban fighters overran Zaranj, the capital of Nimruz province which shares a border with Iran and Pakistan, and also pushed into Shebergan, the capital of the northwestern province of Jowzjan province bordering Turkmenistan.<\/p>\n<p>All four provinces where Taliban fighters are making gains sit along the country\u2019s border and are home to key crossings where tax revenue could be financially profitable to the group.<\/p>\n<p>In recent days, Taliban forces are advancing on critical provincial capitals as U.S. forces continue to conduct several airstrikes to defend their Afghan partners. The US has sent B-52 bombers and Spectre gunships to Afghanistan in a bid to stop Taliban fighters from marching towards key cities.<\/p>\n<p>The Pentagon estimates that the Taliban now control half of Afghanistan&#8217;s 419 district centers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kunduz, the key city in northern Afghanistan, fell to the Taliban Taliban fighters have captured the strategic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[124,1,125],"tags":[9,137,10,128],"class_list":["post-6926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-news","category-united-states","tag-afghanistan","tag-asia","tag-taliban","tag-war"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Taliban-Militant-Afghanistan.jpg?fit=690%2C370&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-1NI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6926"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6929,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6926\/revisions\/6929"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}