KABUL, Afghanistan -- The United States has sent military advisers to aid Afghan forces in Ghazni, where they were struggling on Sunday to regain full control three days after the Taliban launched an assault on the eastern city.
Afghan government forces lost more than 200 officers and soldiers in fighting as Taliban insurgents attacked four different fronts.
The U.S.-led NATO mission has responded with airstrikes in support of Afghan forces -- five on Saturday and 10 on Sunday.
Lt. Col. Martin O'Donnell, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said Afghan forces were "leading a cleanup operation," while acknowledging for the first time that "some U.S. advisers were on the ground."
Afghan troops had "strongly and swiftly reinforced" the city of Ghazni and "continue to hold their ground and maintain control of all government centers," O'Donnell added.
The U.S. and NATO formally concluded their combat mission at the end of 2014, but have repeatedly come to the aid of Afghan forces as they have struggled to combat a resurgent Taliban. The insurgents have meanwhile been steadily increasing their political profile, demanding direct talks with Washington.
Ghazni -- a city of 250,000 people barely 75 miles south of the capital, Kabul -- is on the main north-south highway leading to Kabul. If the Taliban were to capture it, they would effectively cut off the capital and northern Afghanistan -- the longtime home to enemies of the Taliban -- from the insurgents' Pashtun homeland in the south.
Afghanistan's Tolo News reported that a reinforcement convoy of Afghan forces was ambushed Sunday as it made its way from neighboring Paktia province to Ghazni. They were hunkered down about 50 miles from Ghazni, it said.
The assault on Ghazni began as the head of the Taliban's political office was wrapping up a rare diplomatic foray in Uzbekistan. Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai held meetings with Uzbekistan's Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov and other officials.
The Taliban's four-day trip to the neighboring country, which ended Friday, was the strongest sign yet of the group's growing regional clout, while the Ghazni assault has highlighted its military prowess.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is said to be considering a cease-fire offer for the upcoming Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. A three-day holiday cease-fire in June brought rare quiet to much of the country, but the Taliban rejected a government request to extend it.
Instead, they appear intent on seeking a position of strength ahead of the expected talks with the United States, which has been at war in Afghanistan for nearly 17 years.
O'Donnell said, however, that "tactically, operationally and strategically, the Taliban achieved nothing with this failed attack ... The fact remains that the Taliban are unable to seize terrain" and retreat "once directly and decisively engaged."
500 INSURGENTS KILLED
Col. Farid Ahmad Mashal, Ghazni's police chief, said by telephone 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," Mashal said, referring to the northern city overrun briefly by the Taliban in 2015 and 2016.
Mashal credited reinforcements, including U.S. troops, for the work to clear the Taliban from the city. The government in Kabul and the army insisted that they were in full control of Ghazni.
"The strategic locations in Ghazni city are in the control of government forces," Gen. Mohammad Sharif Yaftali, chief of staff of the Afghan National Army, said at a news conference. "The governor's office, prison, Police Headquarters and [Afghan National Army] bases are under government control. The Taliban are settled in houses and shops of people inside the city."
The Taliban destroyed a communications tower in Ghazni, severing phone links and making it difficult to confirm details of the fighting there. However, social media showed videos of badly burned and damaged buildings. Some videos appeared to show government security forces surrendering with their weapons.
Officials and residents told news agencies that they were still under attack by insurgents.
Some residents fled toward Kabul by traversing rural areas. One man, named Abdul Wakil, who reached a police check post outside the capital, told the Reuters news agency that he had seen "burning and fire and dead bodies everywhere in the city."
Baz Mohammad Hemat, director of the Ghazni Hospital, said by telephone that 113 bodies had been taken to the hospital, along with 142 people who had been wounded, most of them in uniform.
"We're running out of hospital rooms; we are using corridors and available space everywhere," Hemat 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 certain to rise Sunday.
"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 and dead out of Ghazni.
Ninety miles west of Ghazni, Taliban fighters have taken control of the Ajristan district. The elite army commando unit that had been defending the district disappeared for two days, and their superiors were uncertain of their fate.
A senior Afghan security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue, said they feared that as many as 100 of the commandos and their police allies had been killed.
"It was a catastrophe," he said.
Twenty-two survivors were carried to safety by rescuers who found them lost on a roadless area in the mountains of the Miramor district.
"We went to meet them with donkeys and motorcycles," said Abdul Qader Haidari, the governor in Miramor. "We have them here now as our guests."
The Taliban spokesman posted a Twitter message saying the Taliban had killed 43 in the Ajristan attack and took "39 hireling commandos" prisoner.
In Faryab province, 250 miles to the northwest, an isolated Afghan National Army base of 100 soldiers lost more than half of its men in a Taliban assault that ended early Sunday morning. The defenders said they did not expect to last another night.
And 275 miles east of the Faryab base, in northern Baghlan province, at a base at Jangal Bagh on the strategic highway between Pul-e-Kumri and Kunduz, insurgents killed seven policemen and nine soldiers and captured three other soldiers Saturday.
Information for this article was contributed by Rahim Faiez and Kathy Gannon of The Associated Press; Rod Nordland, Fahim Abed and Mujib Mashal of The New York Times; and by Pamela Constable and Sayed Salahuddin of The Washington Post.
A Section on 08/13/2018