Taliban continues to make Afghanistan gains with 10th provincial capital seized

Smoke rises from the city of Lashkar Gah after airstrikes against Taliban forces in Helmand province (Abdul Khaliq/AP)

he Taliban captured a strategic provincial capital near Kabul on Thursday, the 10th the insurgents have taken in a weeklong sweep across Afghanistan just weeks before the end of the American military mission there.

Seizing Ghazni cuts off a crucial highway linking the Afghan capital with the country’s southern provinces, which similarly find themselves under assault as part of an insurgent push some 20 years after US and Nato troops invaded and ousted the Taliban government.