Have Entered Capital Of Holdout Province Panjshir, Say Taliban

Talibanhas said previously their forces had secured full control of Panjshir but fighting has been continuing for days, with each side saying it had inflicted large numbers of casualties.

The Taliban said on Sunday their forces had fought their way into the provincial capital of Panjshir, the valley where opposition forces have been holding out since the fall of Kabul three weeks ago. The police headquarters and district centre of Rukhah, adjacent to the provincial capital Bazarak, had fallen, and opposition forces had suffered numerous casualties, with large numbers of prisoners and captured vehicles, weapons and ammunition, Taliban spokesman Bilal Karimi said on Twitter. Fighting was underway in Bazarak, he said. It was not possible to confirm the report, which was echoed on other Taliban Twitter accounts. Earlier on Sunday Fahim Dashti, spokesman for the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRFA), which groups opposition forces, said the Taliban "propaganda machine" was trying to spread distracting messages.