A senior Tajik official said on Friday that Tajikistan is preparing to take in up to 100,000 refugees from neighboring Afghanistan where battles have escalated as United States-led troops withdraw.

Taliban rebels are obtaining control of more and more territory in Afghanistan, which the Pentagon projects now exceeds over half of Afghanistan’s district centers.

Imomali Ibrohimzoda, deputy head of Tajikistan’s emergencies committee, told a briefing on Friday the former Soviet republic was already building two large warehouses to store supplies for refugees in the Khatlon and Gorno-Badakhshan provinces adjacent to the border.

A few hundred Afghan civilians fled to Tajikistan this month but the Dushanbe government says they have already returned to Afghanistan.