Taliban offensive makes key Afghan city a 'ghost town'

KABUL, Afghanistan－Hundreds of people have fled four days of fierce fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban over the key provincial capital of Ghazni that has killed about 120 security forces and civilians, the defense minister and witnesses have said.

Fighting across the country has intensified in recent weeks despite brief ceasefires by government and Taliban forces earlier in the summer.

Nearly 200 insurgents, many of them foreigners, have been killed, the government said.

Between the civilians leaving 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," the 60-year-old Mustafa added while stopped briefly at a checkpoint where police searched for wounded Taliban fighters.

The Taliban's multipronged assault, which began on Friday, overwhelmed Ghazni's defenses and allowed insurgents to capture several parts of it in a major show of force. The Taliban pushed deep into the strategic city about 120 kilometers from the capital, Kabul.

"Ghazni city is the gate to Kabul. The Taliban by launching such a massive offensive on such an important city wants to demonstrate its power to the Afghan government as well as to the world," said Atequllah Omarkhil, a retired army general and military-political analyst.

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, cutting Highway One, a key route linking Kabul to the southern provinces, the insurgents' traditional heartland.

However, a spokesman for the US military, Lieutenant Colonel Martin O'Donnell, said the city "remains under Afghan government control".

General Tareq Shah Bahrami, Afghanistan's defense minister, said about 100 Afghan police and army and 20 civilians have been killed in Ghazni, the first official casualty toll released by the government since the Taliban launched the massive assault.

Base overrun

Taliban fighters also overran a northern Afghan army base, officials said on Tuesday, killing at least 14 soldiers with dozens feared captured.

The Taliban also destroyed a telecommunications tower on Ghazni's outskirts, cutting off landline and cell phone links to the city, Bahrami said, adding that he believes the next 24 hours would turn the tide in the battle.

Meanwhile, a suicide attacker detonated explosives near the office of Afghanistan's election commission in Kabul on Monday, where dozens of protesters had gathered, officials said.

At least one police official was killed and one officer was wounded.

The protesters had gathered in support of a parliamentary candidate who electoral officials had disqualified over his suspected links with "illegal armed groups".