Afghan official: Taliban closing in on key city in the south

The charity, known by its French acronym MSF, has a 300-bed hospital in the city and usually functions with 25 international staff. Molinie would not say how many staff had been evacuated.

He said that the number of people arriving for treatment after being caught up in fighting in districts around the city had been reduced in recent days by the road closures.

“With fears of the town being taken, non-emergency patients prefer to delay their treatment,” he told The Associated Press, though 400 patients arrived at the hospital’s emergency room on Tuesday.

“We are concerned about urban fighting — it is getting closer to the urban centre,” he said.

Helmand is a strategically important province for both the Kabul government and the Taliban, whose insurgency is now in its 15th year. The province produces opium, which is the raw material for most of the world’s heroin and which funds the insurgency.

Southern Afghanistan is considered the Taliban heartland. During the Taliban’s 1996-2001 rule of the country, they made neighbouring Kandahar province the seat of their extremist regime.

In an indication of the seriousness of the Helmand situation, senior Kabul officials, including the deputy interior minister and the deputy chief of the military staff, are in Lashkar Gah, along with elite Afghan forces, said Sediq Sediqqi, the Interior Ministry’s spokesman.

“All our focus is on Helmand right now,” he said. “We know that the threats are high.”

Sediqqi said he was aware of recent claims by Atal and other Helmand officials that the Taliban had taken control of up to 80 per cent of the province but he would not confirm those assessments.

Dawlat Waziri, the defence ministry spokesman, said 60 per cent of the Taliban’s forces were foreign fighters — usually a reference to Pakistanis — and were well trained. AP has reported that the Taliban are believed to have formed a commando-style unit that has been deployed across Helmand, using night vision technology and snipers.

Waziri conceded that two districts are under Taliban control, Baghran and Dishu, but denied reports by local officials that 80 per cent of the province outside Lashkar Gah has fallen to the insurgents.

The U.S. military is providing air support but no ground troops, he said, adding “we have enough ground troops to fight.”

Last September, the Taliban seized the northern city of Kunduz for a few days before they were pushed out by Afghan forces, backed by U.S. airstrikes.

At the time, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in the country, Gen. John Nicholson, vowed no other city would fall to the insurgents.

However, the spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Brig. Gen. Charlie Cleveland, said late Thursday that he doubts reports of the Taliban closing in on Lashkar Gah. He said military bases in the province were still receiving fuel supplies by road.

“The view we still have is that overall Lashkar Gah is not about to fall,” Cleveland told the AP.

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O’Donnell reported from Kabul. Associated Press writer Rahim Faiez in Kabul, Afghanistan contributed to this story.

Mirwais Khan And Lynne O’Donnell, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Afghan official: Taliban closing in on key city in the south

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