120 Afghans killed in fight over strategic city
A police officer fixes Afghanistan’s flag on his ATV Monday as he secures a gathering of civil society activists in Kabul urging the government to secure Ghazni province.
KABUL, Afghanistan — More than 100 members of Afghan security forces and 20 civilians have been killed in four days of heavy fighting with the Taliban in a strategic city, officials said Monday, illustrating the potency of the insurgency even as the U.S. pursues peace talks.
The clashes in Ghazni, about 90 miles southwest of Kabul, the capital, began early Friday and have forced throngs of residents to flee the city by road while others took shelter in their homes.
About 1,000 Afghan troops were sent as reinforcements Monday and helped “to prevent the collapse of Ghazni city to the enemy,” but fighting was ongoing, Defense Minister Tariq Shah Bahrami told reporters in Kabul.
U.S. military advisers were sent to Ghazni to assist Afghan forces, and U.S. warplanes launched airstrikes that killed 140 suspected insurgents since Friday, according to the U.S.-led NATO coalition. Afghan officials said a total of nearly 200 Taliban had been killed in the fighting.
“Hopefully within 24 hours, the situation will be changed remarkably,” Bahrami said.
Just last month, representatives of the Taliban held the first direct talks with U.S. officials, part of a push by the Trump administration to end the 17-year conflict. The meeting reportedly took place in Qatar and involved Alice Wells, a senior State Department official, but no representatives of the Afghan government.
U.S. and Afghan officials have said the prospects for peace talks are encouraging.
But the offensive in Ghazni, which Afghan officials said was carefully planned and involved insurgents from multiple provinces, showed that the Taliban plans to keep fighting to improve its negotiating position.
Even if the Afghan government keeps control of Ghazni — a provincial capital on the main highway leading to Kabul — the situation in the city of 270,000 was bleak, with civilians killed and injured in crossfire and bodies piling up in overwhelmed health facilities. In interviews Sunday, residents described scenes of chaos.
On Sunday, battered sedans pulled up to the hospital entrance carrying wounded civilians, who were carried into the crowded hallways by volunteers. In the distance, dark smoke rose from a fabric market the Taliban had set ablaze.
At a morgue on the hospital grounds, dozens of dead bodies lay in simple wooden coffins surrounded by buzzing flies.
Electricity and cellphone service have been cut off in much of the city, with some residents blaming the Taliban for attacking the infrastructure. U.N. humanitarian officials said Monday that the power shortage had limited the supply of water in Ghazni and food was running low.
Special correspondent Mohammad Anwar Danishyar contributed from Ghazni.