More than 800 Taliban insurgents have launched a major offensive in southern Afghanistan to try to gain territory recently vacated by US troops, officials said Wednesday, adding that 40 civilians have died in five days of fighting.
Around 100 Taliban fighters have been killed, according to the interior ministry, in clashes that erupted as Afghanistan wrestled with a political crisis over alleged fraud in the June 14 election to choose a successor to President Hamid Karzai.
The assault has highlighted the challenges facing Afghan security forces battling the Taliban as US-led NATO forces pull out.
Officials said that 800 militants were involved in attacks centred on the Sangin district of Helmand province, a hotbed of opium production and the scene of intense fighting during the 13-year insurgency.
Mohammad Zaher Azimi, spokesman for the defence ministry, said the Taliban were exploiting the security forces’ reduced firepower.
“The main reason (for the attack) is that now we don’t have the aerial coverage that NATO would provide in the past,” Azimi told Tolo TV news.
“This has given the Taliban the chance to freely move in some areas and mobilise for big offensives… but even without the help of NATO, the security forces have beaten back this attack.”
However, the NATO mission said it had provided limited air support over the last 72 hours as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance help.
The last US troops pulled out of Sangin only last month, handing over their remaining bases to the Afghan forces who have now taken on full responsibility for fighting the militants.
“About 800 fighters started to storm four districts of Helmand last Thursday night,” Helmand provincial governor spokesman Omar Zwak told AFP.
“At least 21 Afghan forces have died and close to 40 civilians were killed.”
Zwak said reinforcements had been sent to repel the attacks in Sangin, Nowzad, Kajaki and Musa Qala districts, where 2,000 families have fled the violence.
The threat of a Taliban revival as US-led combat troops withdraw is a major fear for many Afghans, though government and NATO officials insist that the national army and police are increasingly effective.
On Wednesday, the interior ministry confirmed the scale of the fighting in Helmand but insisted that the insurgents were being defeated.
“There was a major attack by the Taliban and their supporters,” ministry spokesman Seddiq Seddiqi told AFP. “We have reports of a lot of enemy attackers over the last few days.
“We are reinforcing Afghan national security forces and have suffered no major loss of territory. About 100 Taliban have been killed so far.”
Seddiqi said that 18 policemen were killed on Tuesday.
– Power knocked out –
The Taliban had launched overnight attacks on police checkpoints, while power cables from the Kajaki dam to Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, and to Kandahar city had been damaged, causing long outages.
Haji Akhtar Mohammad, an elder in Sangin, told AFP that the insurgents had placed improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in villages and along roads used to transport supplies to Afghan government forces.
He added that civilians were running short of food due to the fighting.
The NATO mission said in an email to AFP that it had provided helicopter escorts for Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) medical evacuations as well as close air support.
“All checkpoints in Helmand are currently under ANSF control and this remains an ANSF-led operation,” it added.
Afghan politicians are locked in a dispute over the ongoing vote count, with presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah alleging massive fraud by his poll rival Ashraf Ghani, the election authorities and outgoing President Karzai.
On Tuesday, the UN said it had stepped in to try to help broker an end to the stand-off, hosting talks between Abdullah and the Independent Election Commission.
According to reports, Ghani has made a surprise comeback and is ahead in the vote count after finishing well behind Abdullah in the first-round election on April 5.
Foreign diplomats have expressed alarm at the prospect of a disputed outcome that could trigger a spiral of instability as the NATO combat mission wraps up this year.
The preliminary election result is due on July 2 and the final result, after adjudication of complaints, is scheduled for July 22.