About three rockets hit Kandahar airport in southern Afghanistan during the night, an official told AFP on Sunday, as the Taliban carried on with their extensive offensive across the country.
“Last night three rockets were fired at the airport and two of them hit the runway… Due to this, all flights from the airport have been cancelled,” airport chief Massoud Pashtun told AFP.
Pashtun said the task to renovate the runway was ongoing and anticipated the airport to be operative later on Sunday.
An official at the civil aviation authority in Kabul confirmed the rocket attack.
The Taliban have for weeks launched wilting assaults on the outskirts of Kandahar, stirring fears that the insurgents were likely to capture the provincial capital.
Kandahar’s airbase is crucial to providing the logistics and air support required to keep the militants from occupying Afghanistan’s second-biggest city.
The attack on the airport came about as the Taliban moved closer to occupying two other provincial capitals — Herat in the west and Lashkar Gah in the south.
The capture of any major urban centre would take their present offensive to another level and fuel concerns that the army is incompetent of combatting the Taliban’s battlefield gains.