© AFP/Getty ImagesAfghan security personnel stand guard along a road in the western city of Qala-i- Naw after the Taliban launched a major assault on the provincial capital.
Insurgents attacked Qala-i-Naw, the capital of Badghis province, overnight and seized the provincial headquarters of the police and the intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), before being pushed back by special forces.
The Taliban have taken swaths of Afghanistan as the US has accelerated the departure of its forces in recent weeks despite warnings from Afghans and the US commander on the ground that such a rapid exit could tip the country into full-blown civil war.
The attack on Qala-i-Naw was the first major assault on a provincial city since the militants began their sweeping advance, although several others have been encircled and are in effect besieged.
The US has announced its withdrawal is now more than 90% complete.
Last week it handed Bagram airbase, the heart of the two-decade-long mission, over to Afghan forces. Although the final departure of the US military is now scheduled for August, without Bagram its ability to operate in the country is limited.
During the fighting in Qala-i-Naw, more than 200 prisoners - including Taliban members - broke out of the city jail. At the height of the attack, government forces were pinned into little more than an army base, a provincial council member told the Guardian.
"They are freely walking inside Qala-i-Naw now," the official said of the Taliban during some of the most intense fighting on Wednesday morning. "Only the army base is currently under government control and local officials are trapped there. The Taliban are in control of the majority of the city at this moment."
Airstrikes and reinforcements from Afghanistan's elite special forces helped push the Taliban fighters back, however, and by the evening a spokesperson for the defence minister, Fawad Aman, said government forces controlled the police and NDS offices and expected to clear the city of Taliban fighters within the next few hours.
"I want to assure people that security and defence forces now have presence in all over the city. The enemy attack has completely been detected, they suffered heavy casualties."The area beyond the city limits may prove harder to regain. The Badghis governor, Hessamuddin Shams, told reporters in a text message in the morning that "all the districts have fallen".
There have been rapid collapses across Afghanistan, including in former anti-Taliban strongholds such as Badakhshan and Takhar provinces, where more than 1,000 police and soldiers fled across the border into Tajikistan to escape the militants' advance.
The fall of most of Badghis, with or without Qala-i-Naw, tightens the militants' hold on the west of the country near the border with Iran. Fighters have also been seizing districts near Herat, the major economic and cultural hub for the region. It came as government and Taliban representatives gathered in Iran for a meeting between Taliban and Afghan government representatives. Official peace negotiations in Qatar have been stalled for months.
Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, urged the delegates to "take difficult decisions today for the future of their country", state-run media reported. After the "failure of the US in Afghanistan", Iran was ready to assist with talks, he added, describing a political solution as "the best choice" to end the conflict.
The speed of the Taliban advance has caused the US to revise warnings about how fast Kabul might fall, but also caught regional powers by surprise. Tajikistan has ordered 20,000 military reservists to strengthen its border with the country.
Afghan defence officials have said they intend to focus on securing cities, roads and border towns in the face of numerous Taliban offensives.
Comment: Videos shared online purported to show members of the Taliban riding into Qala-e-Naw on motorbikes. Force strength and strategy are the two important aspects in the post-US occupation scenario: See also: