Taliban seize Afghan city as helicopters land near US embassy

A US Chinook helicopter flies over the US embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan (Rahmat Gul/AP)

The Taliban have seized the last major city outside of Kabul held by the country’s increasingly isolated central government, cutting off the capital to the east as helicopters began landing at the US embassy there.

The collapse of Jalalabad, near a major border crossing with Pakistan, leaves Afghanistan’s central government in control of just Kabul and six other provincial capitals out of the country’s 34.