Taliban try to take city, kill at least 14

KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban fighters tried to overrun a provincial capital in Afghanistan early on Friday, hiding inside homes before slipping into city streets in the night to attack security forces and killing at least 14 policemen, officials said.

The overnight attack in the city of Ghazni, the capital of a province with the same name, also wounded at least 20 members of the security forces, said Baz Mohammad Hemat, the administrator of the Ghazni city hospital.

Another Taliban attack, this one on Thursday night in western Herat province, left six policemen dead.

The brazen assaults by the Taliban underscore the difficulties Afghan forces face in battling the relentless insurgency on their own in efforts to end the nearly 17-year war.

In Ghazni, the attack began around 2 a.m. with intense gunbattles raging and fires burning in several shops in the city’s residential areas, provincial police chief Farid Ahmad Mashal told the Associated Press.

Mashal said there were more than 100 other casualties but he could not give a breakdown of the dead and wounded. Most of the casualties were Taliban, he said.

Lt. Col. Martin O’Donnell, a spokesman for U.S. forces, said American forces and U.S. attack helicopters assisted Afghan troops in pushing back the Taliban during the night’s multiple attacks in Ghazni.