Taliban fighters threaten to take Afghan province

KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan have taken over most of the rural areas in Ghazni province, even as they continue to battle the government for control of the provincial capital, according to local officials and residents.

Attention in the past four days has focused primarily on the fight for Ghazni city, where the Taliban appear to control most neighborhoods, but the insurgents have also taken over at least four more rural districts in the province, mostly without much of a fight. They have also consolidated their authority in other districts, as local government officials fled.

By Monday, only two of the province’s 18 rural districts were confirmed to be completely in government control. That raised the prospect that if the insurgents did fully take the city, they might also be in a position to control an entire province for the first time in the 17-year war in Afghanistan.

In the city, government forces, supported by U.S. military airstrikes and some U.S. ground forces, continued Monday to hold government buildings, the police headquarters and prison, and military bases. Officials and residents disputed Taliban claims that those facilities had fallen Monday, but residents said the government buildings were under constant attack, and Taliban fighters were in apparent charge of most neighborhoods throughout the city of 270,000.

On Sunday, the director of the hospital in Ghazni, Baz Mohammad Hemat, said 113 bodies had been brought there over the three days since the fighting started, mostly uniformed members of security forces, as well as 142 wounded.

Hemat could not be reached Monday. At a news conference in Kabul, the capital, Interior Minister Wais Ahmad Barmak said 70 police officers had been killed in the past four days.

A United Nations official said there were reports of civilian casualties and that caring for them would be challenging.