- guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 September 2000 01.40 BST
For several weeks they have been trying to win control of Taloqan, in northern Afghanistan. They launched a new offensive on three fronts late on Tuesday night and within hours entered the town, claiming they had captured tanks, weapons and 80 prisoners.
Troops of the former government admitted that they were in retreat.
"We pulled out of the city to avoid civilian casualties," Mohammed Abil, an opposition spokesman, said. "Our forces are still on the city's outskirts."
Many of the town's civilians fled in recent weeks as the fighting grew worse.
The fall of Taloqan will strengthen the Taliban's demand for international diplomatic recognition, particularly during the current UN summit in New York.
"The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan once again requests the Afghan seat at the United Nations," the Taliban's foreign ministry said in a statement last night.
Although President Burhanuddin Rabbani's ousted government still holds Afghanistan's UN seat, his forces now control only one province, Badakshan, and small slices of territory in the north.
Their military base, controlled by the former defence minister Ahmad Shah Masood, is in the Panjsher valley, 70 miles north of Kabul, where steep mountain walls have provided a solid defence since the Soviet occupation.
But Taloqan lies on a crucial supply route linking the Panjsher with Tajikistan, which has provided considerable help to Commander Masood's forces.
"This means the loss of the supply route to the Panjsher valley and the opposition will find it now very difficult to get its supplies from outside," said Kamal Matinuddin, a retired Pakistani general and a writer on Afghanistan.
The opposition may now look to air support for their supplies. Helicopters fly between Tajikistan and the Panjsher, but although the opposition also controls Bagram airbase, close to the valley, heavy fighting in the area makes it too dangerous to use.
"Taloqan is a very important town from the point of view of the opposition. But I don't think it means the end of the fighting," Gen Matinuddin said. "
There are still some areas to be taken by the Taliban, especially the Panjsher."
Taliban fighters said they would now push on to the nearby town of Farkhar, still under opposition control, before trying an assault on Badakshan province.
