Key Afghan city turns into ‘ghost town’
Afghan forces, Taliban force Ghazni desertion
KABUL, Afghanistan — Hundreds of people have fled the key provincial capital of Ghazni after four days of fierce fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban 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 that 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 that Afghan forces are in control of key government positions and other institutions.