Kabul, Aug 17 (IANS): On the first day of Taliban control in Kabul, bridal dress advertisements that showed women with exposed strands of hair were covered in fresh white paint.

Taliban fighters commandeered streets and searched the homes and offices of government officials and media outlets, spreading fear and menace across the Afghan capital, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Armed militants erected checkpoints throughout the city of six million people, imposed a 9 p.m. curfew and took over army and police posts.

Fighters, many grinning in victory, rode through the streets in captured US and Afghan military vehicles flying the Taliban's white flag.

The report said turban-clad insurgents searched the phones of passers-by for evidence of government contacts or compromising material they might deem un-Islamic.

Stores were shut across the city.

On video footage shared over social media, chuckling Taliban fighters sauntered around Parliament building on the city's outskirts.

Rozina, an Afghan-Canadian woman visiting Kabul with her Afghan husband, said Taliban fighters came to their hotel on Monday morning while she was in a back garden.

Frightened, she ran upstairs to their room.

Minutes later, Taliban fighters came inside with the hotel manager, who persuaded her to come out of the bathroom where she had hidden.