Afghan military with support of US Airpower unable to flush Taliban from key provincial capital
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KABUL - At least 100 Afghan security forces have been killed as troops backed by US airpower struggled to push the Taliban from embattled Ghazni city, officials said Monday, while residents reported food and medicine shortages four days after fighting began.
Ghazni lies along the major Kabul-Kandahar highway, effectively serving as a gateway between Kabul and the militant strongholds in the south. The US forces in Afghanistan said they have been conducting airstrikes daily since the fighting began.
The insurgents seized control of the districts of Khawaja Omari north of the city and Ajrestan in the west, with officials saying dozens of Afghan security forces were killed or missing. Confusion over one deployment of commandos headed for Ghazni also raised concerns, with local media reporting up to 100 special forces troops were missing. An official at the Ministry of Defense denied the reports.
The fighting fuelled an increasingly fevered political atmosphere ahead of October´s parliamentary elections, as concern grows over potential security threats from the Taliban and other armed groups. Diplomats in Kabul said the government had admitted being taken by surprise by the attack.
US forces in Kabul denied reports that the highway had been blocked by the insurgents, saying Afghan forces remained in control of the area and were carrying out a clearance operation targeting militants. The Afghan officials said U.S. special forces units were on the ground helping to coordinate air strikes and ground operations and the U.S. military said its aircraft had launched two dozen air strikes since Friday. “U.S .advisers are assisting the Afghan forces and U.S. airpower has delivered decisive blows to the Taliban, killing more than 140 since August 10,” said Lt Col Martin O´Donnell, the spokesman for U.S Forces-Afghanistan.
“About 100 security forces have lost their lives and between 20 and 30 civilians have been killed,” defence minister Tariq Shah Bahrami told a press conference in Kabul, offering the first high-level official casualty figure since the insurgents entered the city. He also said that 194 insurgents had been killed and 147 wounded. The Taliban swiftly responded, saying the government´s claims were “baseless” and that talks were “under way for their surrender”.
The Afghan government controls Ghazni, he said, adding there was no threat of collapse from “isolated and disparate” Taliban forces, with Highway 1, the main route from Kabul, open. “That said, clearing operations are ongoing and sporadicclashes with the Taliban, particularly outside the city, continue,” he said.
The attack on Ghazni, the Taliban´s heaviest blow since they came close to overrunning the western city of Farah in May, has hit hopes of peace spawned by a surprise three-day truce during June´s Eid al-Fitr holiday. Doctors were struggling to treat dozens of wounded at hospitals in the eastern provincial capital, where residents said insurgents roamed the streets.
At a hospital in the city wounded people could be seen groaning in agony on stretchers, while uncovered wooden coffins filled with bodies were laid on the floor. A doctor in the hospital´s intensive care unit said they had received over 80 dead bodies as of Sunday and had treated more than 160 patients, many of whom were had been injured by gunshots or shrapnel.
An AFP reporter in the city said late Sunday that militants were going door to door and commandeering supplies including water, tea, and wheelbarrows to move injured fighters.
Ghazni residents who arrived in Kabul after fleeing the violence told AFP that the dead bodies of militants and soldiers continued to litter the streets, while government offices have been set ablaze by Taliban fighters and food prices are rising.Communication networks in Ghazni remained mostly down, and officials have been reticent, making any information difficult to verify and fuelling rumours of high tolls. -APP/AFP
