Hundreds flee Afghan fighting
City like a ghost town as security forces, Taliban battle
KABUL, Afghanistan — Hundreds of people have fled the fierce fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban over the key provincial capital of Ghazni, a battle that has left about 120 security forces and civilians dead, the defense minister and witnesses said Monday.
Nearly 200 insurgents, many of them foreigners, have been killed in four days of fighting, 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,” Mustafa, 60, said while stopped 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. The Taliban pushed deep into the 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. It would give the group control of part of Highway One, which links Kabul to the southern provinces, the insurgents’ traditional heartland.
Losing Ghazni to the Taliban would essentially cut Afghanistan in half by closing its second-busiest trade route. Although Kabul is also supplied from Pakistan, the trade route to Iran and the Gulf supplies the northern half of the country with many essentials.
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.
“The Taliban have failed in reaching their goal,” said Col. Fared Mashal, the provincial police chief.
Gen. Tareq Shah Bahrami, Afghanistan’s defense minister, said about 100 members of the Afghan police or army and 20 civilians had been killed in Ghazni, the first official death toll released by the government since the Taliban launched the assault.
About 1,000 additional troops were sent to Ghazni, Bahrami said. He added that 194 insurgents, including 12 Taliban leaders, were killed — with fighters from Pakistan, southern Russia’s Chechnya region, and various Arab countries among the dead.
The Taliban destroyed a telecommunications tower on Ghazni’s outskirts, cutting off landline and cellphone links to the city, where shops are closed. The fighting severely damaged Ghazni’s historic neighborhoods and cultural treasures, Bahrami said.
The United Nations, meanwhile, expressed concern for the civilians caught up in the fighting.
“Communications networks and electricity supply are currently down in the city, resulting in water shortages, and food is also reportedly running low,” U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said.
Rik Peeperkorn, acting U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan, said residents “have seen their city turn into a battlefield since Friday morning, with fighting and clashes reportedly still ongoing.”
The insurgents began the attack by entering homes in Ghazni and then slipping out into the night to attack security forces.
In recent months, the Taliban have seized several districts across Afghanistan, staging near-daily attacks on security forces, but they have been unable to capture and hold urban areas.
The U.S. and NATO formally concluded their combat mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, but they have repeatedly gone to the aid of Afghan forces as they struggle to combat the resurgent Taliban.
President Ashraf Ghani is said to be considering a cease-fire offer to the Taliban for the upcoming Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, which starts Aug. 21. A threeday holiday cease-fire in June brought rare quiet to much of the country, but the insurgents rejected a government request to extend it.
The Taliban have sought a position of strength ahead of expected talks with the United States, which has been at war in Afghanistan for nearly 17 years.
The Taliban said they met with Alice Wells, the top U.S. diplomat for South Asia, in Qatar last month for preliminary talks. The U.S. neither confirmed nor denied the meeting, but it acknowledged that Wells was in Qatar, where the Taliban maintain an office. The Taliban said they expect another round of talks.
Earlier this year, the U.S. sent more military advisers to Afghanistan. It also shifted A-10 attack planes and other aircraft that had been used to strike Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq. These and other moves boosted the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan by at least 3,500, to more than 14,000.