The US on Thursday urged US citizens to leave Afghanistan immediately using available commercial flight options, a notice on the website of the US embassy in Kabul said, amid a speedy Taliban advance across the country.

Taliban fighters captured the strategic Afghan city of Ghazni on Thursday. This took them to within 150km (95 miles) of Kabul, the latest in their rapid takeover as the US withdraws its troops from the country, leaving the Afghan government to fight the Islamist group on its own.

“The US embassy urges US citizens to leave Afghanistan immediately using available commercial flight options,” a notice on the embassy’s website said, and warned Americans about the capability of the mission at this time in serving citizens.

“Given the security conditions and reduced staffing, the embassy’s ability to assist US citizens in Afghanistan is extremely limited even within Kabul,” the notice said.

The US on April 27 ordered government employees out of its embassy in Kabul if their work could be done elsewhere, citing increasing violence in the city.

State department spokesman Ned Price earlier this week said the official posture of the embassy has not changed, when answering questions about whether an evacuation of the embassy is more likely.

But he added that Washington was evaluating the threat environment around its embassy in Kabul on a daily basis.

Embassy assurance

American negotiators are trying to extract assurances from the Taliban that they will not attack the US embassy if the extremist group overruns the capital, two American officials said.

The effort, led by Zalmay Khalilzad, the chief American envoy in talks with the Taliban, seeks to stave off an evacuation of the embassy as the fighters rapidly seize cities across Afghanistan. The Taliban’s advance has put embassies in Kabul on high alert for a surge of violence in coming months, or even weeks, and forced consulates and other diplomatic missions elsewhere in the country to shut down.

American diplomats now are trying to determine how soon they may need to evacuate the US embassy should the Taliban prove to be more bent on destruction than a détente.