Reporter finds Taliban in control of key Afghan city

GHAZNI, Afghanistan — The Afghan government declared Saturday that there was no longer a cause for concern about the strategic southeastern city of Ghazni falling to the Taliban.

But, a reporter for the New York Times who entered the city Saturday morning found insurgents confidently in control at every intersection. At Sanayi High School, where the day before there had been a large Afghan police check post, now there were a halfdozen Taliban fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and AK-47s.

“As a civilian your life is important to us, so you should go back to your village or home now,” their leader, wearing a black turban, told the reporter. “We don’t want to kill you, but we have orders not to allow civilians out in the city.”

Both the government and the insurgents claimed to be in control. With cellphone towers destroyed, communications were sporadic and information from Ghazni was scarce.

A city of about

280,000, Ghazni is on the main highway between Kabul, the capital, and the country’s secondlargest city, Kandahar. Taking Ghazni, even briefly, would be the Taliban’s most important victory yet.

Residents fleeing the city described streets littered with the unrecov- ered bodies of policemen, insurgents and civilians a day after the Taliban staged a large-scale attack in an effort to overrun the strategic city. And they saw no sign of any government counterattack.

It was a picture completely at odds with what Afghan officials were saying in Kabul.

“Overall, the situation is under our control in Ghazni, and the problems are not that serious,” Najib Danish, spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, said at a news conference. “The concern about the collapse of the province to the Taliban is gone now.”

Danish confirmed that 25 Afghan security forces, as well as one Afghan journalist, had been killed in the fighting.

Taliban sources had little to say Saturday, other than claiming to have destroyed many checkpoints in the city. They said they were continuing to fight. The Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, did claim in a Twitter post that the insurgents had “liberated” the city’s prison, releasing everyone inside.

Government officials, including Danish, denied that Saturday.