Afghanistan disaster LIVE Updates: Taliban take Kandahar, nation’s second largest metropolis, in offensive in the direction of Kabul

The Taliban captured two main Afghan cities, the nation’s second- and third-largest after Kabul, and a strategic provincial capital on Thursday, additional squeezing the embattled authorities simply weeks earlier than the top of the American army mission in Afghanistan.
The seizure of Kandahar and Herat marks the largest prizes but for the Taliban, who’ve taken 12 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals as a part of a weeklong blitz. The seize of the town of Ghazni, in the meantime, cuts off an important freeway linking the Afghan capital, Kabul, with the nation’s southern provinces, all a part of an rebel push some 20 years after US and NATO troops invaded and ousted the Taliban authorities.

Meanwhile, the US and UK are scrambling reinforcements to Kabul to assist evacuate their diplomats, troopers and residents in addition to 1000’s of Afghans who’ve labored with them, because the Taliban advance in the direction of the capital.
The Pentagon introduced it might ship three battalions, about 3,000 troopers, to Kabul’s worldwide airport inside 24 to 48 hours of the announcement on Thursday. The UK stated it might ship 600 troops, and the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, stated Britain was relocating its embassy from the outskirts of the safe Green Zone to a doubtlessly safer location nearer to the centre of the capital.