Taliban appear to have seized 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.

However, 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 a day earlier there had been a large Afghan police check post, a halfdozen Taliban fighters with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and AK-47s were stationed.

“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.

Along a 3-mile stretch of the city, there were four Taliban checkpoints, each with a commandeered car and a pair of motorcycles among four fighters.

There was no sign of U.S. airstrikes or helicopters Saturday, as there had been the day before.

Ghazni, a city of about 280,000, is on the main highway between Kabul, the capital, and the country’s second-largest city, Kandahar. Taking Ghazni, even briefly, would be the Taliban’s most important victory yet, cutting off northern Afghanistan and the capital from the traditional Taliban homelands in the south. It also would be a severe defeat for the U.S. and Afghan strategy of holding population centers rather than territory.

Residents fleeing the city a day after the Taliban carried out a large-scale attack said they saw no sign of a government counterattack. Government radio and television was shut down; only Radio Shariat, a Taliban station, was broadcasting.

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 had been killed.