100 security forces killed in fight for Afghan city

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.

The Afghan government said it had sent reinforcements to the strategic city, which lies barely two hours drive from Kabul on the main highway connecting the capital with the country´s south.

“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”. 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. “There are no police or soldiers to guard the hospital. They bring their wounded and then leave,” the doctor, Mohammad Arif Omari, said. “The hospital is overwhelmed,” Andrea Catta Preta, a spokeswoman for the International Red Cross in Kabul, told AFP.

With residents reporting power remained out in the city, she said the Red Cross was able to reach the hospital on Monday during a brief lull in fighting, providing nearly 200 litres of fuel for its generator and medical supplies for over 100 people. “Everybody is requesting assistance, so we have been doing what we can whenever we have a window of security to do something,” she added. 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. “Everyone wanted to find a way to flee the city. Most of the people are still hiding in their basements as fighting is going from street to street,” said Ghazni journalist Fayeza Fayez, who arrived in Kabul late Sunday after fleeing the city.