Taliban captured the key eastern Afghanistan city of Jalalabad without a fight on Sunday, leaving the territory controlled by the crumbling government to little more than the capital Kabul.
The United States started evacuating its diplomats and was sending more troops to help secure Kabul airport and the embassy after the Taliban’s lightning advances brought the Islamist group to the door of the capital in a matter of days.
Just last week, a U.S. intelligence estimate said Kabul could hold out for at least three months.
“We have a small batch of people leaving now as we speak, a majority of the staff are ready to leave,” a U.S. official told Reuters on Sunday. “The embassy continues to function.”
The fall of Jalalabad gives the insurgents control of a road leading to the Pakistan city of Peshawar, one of the main highways into landlocked Afghanistan.
It followed the Taliban’s seizure of the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif late on Saturday, also with little fighting.
“There are no clashes taking place right now in Jalalabad because the governor has surrendered to the Taliban,” a Jalalabad-based Afghan official told Reuters. “Allowing passage to the Taliban was the only way to save civilian lives.”
A second security official in the city said the Taliban had agreed to give safe passage to government officials and security forces while they leave Jalalabad. The decision to surrender was taken to avoid “casualties and destruction”, the official said. Reuters