[The fall of Ghazni would be the Taliban’s most important victory yet, as the city is on the main north-south highway, and its capture would effectively cut the capital and the north from the insurgents’ Pashtun homeland in the south.]
By Rod Nordland, Fahim Abed and Mujib Mashal
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An
Afghan soldier at a checkpoint on the Ghazni highway, in Maidan Shar,
Afghanistan,
on Sunday. Credit Mohammad Ismail/Reuter
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KABUL, Afghanistan —
More than 100 police officers and soldiers have been killed in the southeastern
Afghan city of Ghazni in three days, a hospital official said on Sunday, as
fighting continued in the strategic city, where Taliban insurgents have seized control
of most neighborhoods.
The insurgents have also begun spreading into districts
outside Ghazni city, two of which fell to them overnight, according to reports
from local residents and Afghan officials.
Baz Mohammad Hemat, the director of the Ghazni Hospital,
said by telephone that 113 bodies had been taken to the hospital, along with
142 wounded, most of them in uniform.
“We’re running out of hospital rooms; we are using corridors
and available space everywhere,” he said. “Fighting is quite close to the
hospital. The situation is really bad here. We’re receiving more and more
wounded and dead every hour.”
The death toll appeared sure to rise, with numerous reports
of bodies left unrecovered around the city. An additional 100 Afghan soldiers
and police officers have been killed in fighting in other parts of the country
over the past two days, officials said, a remarkably high death toll on top of
the violence in Ghazni city.
The fall of Ghazni would be the Taliban’s most important
victory yet, as the city is on the main north-south highway, and its capture
would effectively cut the capital and the north from the insurgents’ Pashtun
homeland in the south.
“Heavy fighting is ongoing around the governor’s office, the
Police Headquarters and the compound of the intelligence agency,” said Nasir
Ahmad Faqiri, a member of the provincial council. “The forces in Ghazni have
resisted well, but naturally they have fought so long. The reinforcements have
not done anything effective, all they have done is establish a base for
themselves.”
He added, “Bodies are lying around, they have decomposed,
and no one is doing anything to evacuate them.”
The Afghan Minister of Public Health, Ferozuddin Feroz, said
he had asked the International Committee of the Red Cross for “urgent help” in
transporting the wounded out of Ghazni.
Taliban fighters there continued to take over guard posts
the police had abandoned. At one, an insurgent shot a black dog three times
with his AK-47. Asked why, he answered that it was a police guard dog that had
alerted officers when the Taliban approached in the night.
At another post, a Ghazni resident, Ali Ahmad, said that he
had seen the bodies of 12 police officers as he was leaving the city.
A reporter for The New York Times witnessed Taliban fighters
overrunning the district of Khwaja Omari, immediately north of the city, late
Friday and taking charge of government facilities and installations there. The
insurgents left most civilians alone but knocked on the doors of homes in
search of government officials.
Also late Friday, the Taliban overran Ajristan District, in
west Ghazni Province, Zamin Ali Hedayat, the governor of the neighboring
Malistan District, said by phone. That brought most of the 18 districts in
Ghazni Province under the insurgents’ domination, with the exception of three
districts with large populations of the Hazara ethnic minority. Other areas are
predominantly Pashtun, as are most Taliban.
“The police chief of Ajristan, Obaidullah Khan, tried to
flee the district yesterday,” Mr. Hedayat said. “On his way, the Taliban caught
him with about 30 men. They beheaded Obaidullah Khan and killed the rest of the
police.”
A senior Afghan official said that the authorities’ response
to the Taliban attack on Ghazni had been chaotic. Police officers who had been
besieged in Ghazni Prison for two days were almost out of ammunition when the
Afghan Army reached them with supplies. It turned out, however, that the army
uses American ammunition, while the police use Russian ammunition. The official
spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release
the information.
Col. Farid Ahmad Mashal, Ghazni’s police chief, said by
telephone that reinforcements, including American troops, were beginning to
clear the Taliban from the city. He said that more than 1,000 insurgents had
attacked Ghazni, and that 500 had been killed.
“They dreamed of repeating the fall of Kunduz here, and we
sent them to their graves with those dreams,” he said, referring to the
northern city overrun briefly by the Taliban in 2015 and 2016.
The government in Kabul and the army continued to insist
that they were in full control of Ghazni. “The strategic locations in Ghazni
city are in the control of government forces,” Mohammad Sharif Yaftali, chief
of staff of Afghan Army, said at a news conference. “The governor’s office,
prison, Police Headquarters and A.N.A. bases are under government control. The
Taliban are settled in houses and shops of people inside the city.”
That being the case, the authorities said they were slowly
moving ahead with “clearance operations” to remove the Taliban. Video posted on
social media, however, showed insurgents strolling casually around the city.
Numerous local residents confirmed that militants were commandeering homes to
use as bases.
Accounts from residents leaving the city said the only areas
still being held by the government were the governor’s office, police and
intelligence agencies headquarters, an ancient fort called the Bala Hisar and a
few other government facilities.
The United States military has an estimated 14,000 troops in
Afghanistan, mostly advisers and support forces, but also Special Operations
troops. Unlike most of the other 40 members of the international military
coalition in Afghanistan, the Americans are allowed to participate in military
operations, and they have done so on several occasions when Afghan forces ran
into severe difficulty. In addition, the United States frequently provides air
support for the Afghans.
A spokesman for the United States military, Lt. Col. Martin
L. O’Donnell, said that 10 American airstrikes had been carried out on Sunday,
five on Saturday and one on Friday. He described Ghazni as “relatively quiet”
and added, “What we are seeing as the clearing operations continue is the
Taliban attempting to harass Afghan forces and using civilians, who they show
little regards toward, as cover.”
In addition to taking the Khwaja Omari district north of
Ghazni city, the insurgents took over the large community of Nawabad, to the
northwest, on Friday. Saleem Shah, a money changer who lives in Nawabad and was
reached by telephone, said the insurgents circulated, hoisting their white
flags and telling residents they would not be harmed. Many residents with
multistory homes, however, were asked to leave so the Taliban could use their
roofs to take position for fighting.
Taliban insurgents said they had amassed forces from several
provinces for the attack on Ghazni, the fourth time they have tried to overrun
a provincial capital. Despite the large number of insurgents fighting in
Ghazni, the Taliban also mounted deadly attacks in two other parts of the
country on Friday and Saturday.
In the northern province of Faryab, a sustained assault over
several weeks on an Afghan National Army base in the Ghormusch District ended
on Saturday with the deaths of 32 Afghan security forces, 17 army soldiers and
15 border officers, according to First Lt. Shah Fahim, the platoon commander
whose unit was defending the base.
His company commander, Capt. Sayid Azam, was among the dead.
“The base is full of wounded and dead, and the whole place is covered in
blood,” Lieutenant Fahim said. “It’s a miracle we’re alive. They attacked us
with 1,000 militants and all kinds of heavy equipment.”
More than a third of the defenders were killed, he said.
The day before, hundreds of miles away, in the north central
province of Baghlan, a Taliban attack on a base guarding the strategic highway
to Kunduz killed nine soldiers and seven police officers, according to the
local battalion commander, Zabihullah Ghorzang. Three other soldiers were taken
prisoner by the insurgents, he said.
Four days before his death, Captain Azam spoke by cellphone
to a reporter, his voice desperate and angry. “Since 20 days we are asking for
help and no one is listening,” he said. “Every night fighting, every night the
enemy are attacking us from three sides with rockets. We don’t know what to
do.”
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Rod Nordland, Fahim Abed and Mujib Mashal on Twitter: @rodnordland, @fahimabed
and @MujMash.
Reporting
was contributed by Nesar Azadzoi in Khwaja Omari, Afghanistan; Jawad Sukhanyar
and Fatima Faizi in Kabul; Farooq Jan Mangal in Khost, Afghanistan; and Najim
Rahim in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan.