New Delhi, Aug 8 (TIWN) The Taliban is kidnapping and forcibly marrying off teenage girls and young women to its fighters as it recaptures huge areas of Afghanistan.

The Mail newspaper on Sunday reported that whenever the extremists capture a new town or district, they issue orders through the speakers of local mosques for the names of wives and widows of all local government and police personnel to be handed over.  The group has rounded up hundreds of young women to be married off to their militants as a "war booty", local residents and officials told the newspaper. 

Families fearing the Taliban's advance have been sending women and girls to safer areas, including the Afghan capital Kabul, to prevent them being taken away. 

There have been local reports of women being forcibly married off in at least two northern Afghan regions called Takhar and Badakhshan, while a similar attempt was made in the province of Bamyan, where the insurgent group was driven out by Afghan security forces after four days of fierce fighting.  The fundamentalist organisation has been closing down girls' schools in towns it takes over. Women are ordered that they can only leave their homes if they wear a burqa, and are chaperoned by a male adult, the report said.