Taliban say militants waiting at Kabul gates after seizing Jalalabad

The Taliban have reportedly entered the Afghan capital but the group said its militants have been ordered to wait at the city’s gates and that they are not planning to capture Kabul “by force” shortly after they seized control of a strategic eastern city without any resistance.

 Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry announced on Sunday that the Taliban had started entering the capital “from all sides.”

After advancing on the capital, the Taliban reportedly ordered the militants to refrain from violence, allow safe passage to anyone seeking to leave, and urged women to head to protected areas.

A tweet from the Afghan presidential office said gunshots had been heard at a number of points around Kabul, but that security forces were in control of the city.

As the Taliban closed in on Kabul, local media reports said the United States had started evacuating diplomats from its embassy in Kabul by helicopter. Several EU staff were also moved to a safer, undisclosed location in the capital.

The militants earlier in the day captured Afghanistan’s key eastern city of Jalalabad, effectively leaving Kabul the only major city remaining under the government’s control.

The militants took control of the strategic city, the capital of the eastern Afghan Province of Nangarhar, on Sunday, following an escalating offensive that also put them in charge of the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif hours earlier.

Local media reports said the militants captured Jalalabad without a fight, with Afghan officials based in the city saying, “Allowing passage to the Taliban was the only way to save civilian lives.”

The fall of Jalalabad secures roads connecting Afghanistan to Pakistan for the militants.

The Taliban currently hold all of Afghanistan’s border crossings, according to media reports.

The Associated Press quoted Pakistan’s Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid as saying that the militants had seized the Torkham Border Crossing, the last post still under government control.

Taliban said late on Saturday that all key locations across Mazar-i-Sharif had been “completely conquered,” and that the group had also seized “a large number of vehicles, weapons, and equipment.”