Afghan forces say regaining control over besieged city
AFGHANISTAN Afghan troops backed by US forces gained control over large parts of the embattled city of Ghazni yesterday, officials said, while reports of a Taliban attack in another province raised new questions about Afghanistan’s prospects. Heavy fighting has rocked Ghazni since late last week, exposing the government’s failure to ensure the security of the strategic city on the main road between the capital, Kabul, and the south of the country. Communications with Ghazni were cut when its telecommunications masts were destroyed in the fighting but as contact was restored and people escaped the city, a grim picture was emerging.
Video footage arriving in Kabul on yesterday showed bodies and burnedout vehicles strewn in streets lined with destroyed buildings. Defence ministry spokesman Mohammad Radmanish said government forces in Ghazni were “reasserting control over strategic checkpoints”. “Taliban militants have been pushed back. We will soon have complete control over the city”, he said.
Hundreds of people have been killed and wounded in the fighting, which followed months of warnings from officials in the city about its vulnerability as the Taliban tightened their grip on the surrounding countryside. Government officials said nearly 100 members of the security forces have been killed along with nearly 200 insurgents and at least twenty civilians.
The Taliban said on Monday 266 members of government forces had been killed. The violence has shattered faint hope for moves towards a peace process generated by an unprecedented threeday truce during the Eid alFitr holiday in June, and a Taliban report late last month of a meeting between a senior US diplomat and Taliban representatives in Doha. (Reuters)