Kabul offers Taliban power-sharing proposal to end fight: What you need to know

The Taliban seized the strategic Afghan city of Ghazni on Thursday, just 95 miles from Kabul. The government has now effectively lost most of northern and western Afghanistan.

The fall of the city, the 10th provincial capital of Afghanistan, lies along the major Kabul-Kandahar highway and serves as a gateway between the capital and militant strongholds in the south.

Spokesman Mirwais Stanikzai confirmed that the city's governor had been arrested by Afghan security forces.

According to a member of the government's team in Doha who asked not to be named, Kabut handed a proposal to Taliban negotiators in Qatar offering a power-sharing deal in return for an end to the fighting.

A second negotiator, Ghulam Farooq Majroh said the Taliban had been given an offer about a "government of peace" without providing more specifies.

Fighting was also raging in Kandahar and Lashkar Gar, pro-Taliban heartlands in the south as well as Herat in the west.

Taliban said they had overrun the heavily fortified jail and hundreds of prisoners were released and taken to safety.

According to the UN, more than 1000 civilians had been killed in Afghanistan in the past month.