Taliban Seize Capital of Afghanistan’s Nimroz Province

Videos circulating on social media showed Taliban fighters loitering near the open gates of the Nimroz governor’s residence and others sitting atop captured Humvees. One resident reached by phone said the Taliban took the city without a fight and that the provincial governor and senior officials had fled. Many of them headed over the nearby Iranian border as the Taliban advanced, said the resident, who declined to give her name for fear of retribution.

“I am afraid,” she said. “I cannot go out because the Taliban are in the city and who knows if they come and search houses.”

Though sparsely populated, Nimroz is an important trade gateway with Iran. In recent weeks, the Taliban captured most of Afghanistan’s international border crossings, leaving only a handful of customs points under tenuous government control.

While the Taliban had seized some Afghan provincial capitals in the past, they were quickly pushed out at the time thanks to U.S. air support—backing that is no longer readily available because all American combat aircraft have now been withdrawn from the country. For now, the U.S. continues limited air missions from bases in the Persian Gulf.

In the northern city of Sheberghan, the capital of Jowzjan province and the stronghold of Uzbek warlord

Abdul Rashid Dostum,

Taliban fighters pushed deep into the city overnight and were engaged in fierce gunbattles with responding Afghan troops near the governor’s residence Friday, according to residents.

The Taliban, however, appeared to suffer a setback in the southern city of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province. Afghan officials said heavy U.S. and Afghan airstrikes helped blunt an aggressive Taliban offensive into the city, and that a counterattack against the insurgents was under way.

In addition to the conventional offensive, the Taliban are also pursuing an assassination campaign against government officials in Kabul. On Friday, Taliban gunmen shot to death Dawa Khan Meenapal, the head of the Government Media and Information Center, as he was traveling in the Afghan capital. The shooting came days after the insurgents tried to kill the country’s defense minister, launching a complex suicide attack on his fortified residence. The minister wasn’t home at the time and was unhurt. Earlier this week, the Taliban managed to assassinate in Kabul the chief of the Syedabad district of neighboring Wardak province.

The Taliban on Friday issued a statement claiming responsibility for the assassination of Mr. Meenapal, describing the shooting on Twitter as a “special attack of the Mujahedeen.”

Mr. Meenapal previously served as deputy spokesman for Afghan President

Ashraf Ghani.

“We are saddened and disgusted by the Taliban’s targeted killing of Dawa Khan Meenapal, a friend and colleague,” U.S. Charge d’Affaires in Afghanistan Ross Wilson said in a statement. He called Mr. Meenapal “a friend and colleague, whose career was focused on providing truthful information to all Afghans about Afghanistan.”

Write to Alan Cullison at alan.cullison@wsj.com