A hideout used by Taliban insurgents is seen being destroyed in an airstrike by defense forces in a video released by the Afghanistan government on Twitter. Tens of terrorists were killed and wounded in the attack in Zherai district of Kandahar province, it said. At least 250 such insurgents have been killed while nearly 100 were wounded in battles at several major cities over the past 24 hours, the government has said. These developments come as the Taliban makes rapid territorial gains amid the US military's final stage of withdrawal from the war-torn country. Taliban escalated its nationwide offensive in Afghanistan on August 1, renewing assaults on three major cities & rocketing a major airport in the south amid warnings that the conflict was rapidly worsening. As Afghan government forces struggled with a resurgent Taliban after the withdrawal of US-led foreign forces, hundreds of commandos were deployed to the economically important western city of Herat. While authorities in the southern city of Lashkar Gah called for more troops to rein in the assaults amid fierce fighting. On July 31 night, they fired three rockets at the airport in Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city and a former bastion of the insurgents. The Afghanistan government has repeatedly dismissed the Taliban's steady territorial gains over the summer as "lacking strategic value.”