Key city turned into ‘ghost town’ by battles
KABUL, Afghanistan — Hundreds of people have fled four days of fierce fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban over the key provincial capital of Ghazni that has killed about 120 security forces and civilians, the defense minister and witnesses said Monday.
Nearly 200 insurgents, many of them foreigners, have been killed, the government said.
Between the civilians who have left the city and those too fearful to venture from their homes into the streets, “Ghazni has become a ghost town,” said Ghulam Mustafa, who made it to neighboring Maidan Wardak province with 14 of his relatives.
“The city became so dangerous,” the 60-year-old Mustafa told The Associated Press while stopped briefly at a checkpoint where police searched for wounded Taliban fighters.
The Taliban’s multipronged assault, which began Friday,
overwhelmed Ghazni’s defenses and allowed insurgents to capture several parts of it in a major show of force. The Taliban pushed deep into the strategic city about 75 miles from the capital, Kabul.
The United States has carried out airstrikes and sent military
advisers to aid Afghan forces in the city of 270,000 people. The fall of Ghazni, which is the capital of the province of the same name, would be an important victory for the Taliban, cutting Highway One, a key route linking Kabul to the southern provinces, the insurgents’ traditional heartland.
A spokesman for the U.S. military, Lt. Col. Martin O’Donnell, said the city “remains under Afghan government control, and the isolated and disparate Taliban forces remaining in the city do not pose a threat to its collapse, as some have claimed.”
He added attempts by the insurgents to hide among the residents “does pose a threat to the civilian population, who were terrorized and harassed by this ineffective attack and the subsequent execution of innocents, destruction of homes and burning of a market.”
Sporadic clashes are continuing, O’Donnell said.
Afghan authorities insist the city will not fall to the Taliban and Afghan forces are in control of key government positions and other institutions.
“The Taliban have failed in reaching their goal,” said Col. Fared Mashal, the provincial police chief.
Gen. Tareq Shah Bahrami, Afghanistan’s defense minister, said about 100 Afghan police and army and 20 civilians have been killed in Ghazni, the first official casualty toll released by the government since the Taliban launched the massive assault.
At a news conference in Kabul, Bahrami said the casualty figures are not definite and the numbers might change. Interior Minister Wais Ahmad Barmak said nearly 70 police were killed.
About 1,000 additional troops were sent to Ghazni, Bahrami said. He added that 194 insurgents, including 12 Taliban leaders, were killed — with fighters from Pakistan, southern Russia’s region of Chechnya and various Arab countries among the dead.
The Taliban destroyed a telecommunications tower on Ghazni’s outskirts, cutting off landline and cellphone links to the city, where shops are closed. The fighting severely damaged Ghazni’s historic neighborhoods and cultural treasures, Bahrami said, adding he believes the next 24 hours would turn the tide in the battle.