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Afghan Forces Seek to Regain Kunduz, Major Northern City, From Taliban Taliban Advance on Afghan Forces Rallying Near Kunduz
(about 11 hours later)
KABUL, Afghanistan — A day after the Taliban took their first major city in 14 years, a counterattack was underway Tuesday, but ground forces sent from other provinces to recapture the northern city, Kunduz, were delayed by ambushes and roadside bombs, officials said. KABUL, Afghanistan — A day after Afghan government forces ceded control of the Kunduz provincial capital to the Taliban within a few hours, the promised counterattack also appeared to be falling apart, as the insurgents on Tuesday night began advancing against security forces who were trying to rally at the airport outside the city.
American forces carried out an airstrike outside the city Tuesday morning, said Col. Brian Tribus, a spokesman for the United States forces in Afghanistan. He did not specify the target, but said the strike was carried out to eliminate a threat to coalition and Afghan forces. Officials and local elders in Kunduz said they had yet to see all but a few of the promised government reinforcements. Even as the government reported that some of the forces had begun arriving at the airport, most appeared to be delayed on the roads to Kunduz city by ambushes and roadside bombs, local officials said.
Ghulam Rabbani, a member of the Kunduz provincial council, said ground forces from Kabul and the northern province of Balkh had been repeatedly ambushed by the Taliban on their way to Kunduz. Some of the reinforcements were waiting in nearby Baghlan to meet with the forces from Kabul, said Col. Abdul Qahar, an Afghan Army spokesman in the north. As the crisis for President Ashraf Ghani’s government and its security forces deepened on Tuesday, he sought to assure the Afghan public that the push to win back Kunduz would succeed. Despite reports that a rout was underway in the major northern city, he insisted that it was more a matter of restraint by his security forces than of failure.
Other Afghan security forces at the outlying Kunduz airport, including about 300 commandos who had arrived by air, began to press toward the city center early Tuesday morning, but their progress was slow, officials said. Most of the city remained under Taliban control, with security forces having taken back only a few government buildings. “The problem is that the treacherous enemy is using civilians as a human shield,” Mr. Ghani said during a news conference, accompanied by his war cabinet. “The government of Afghanistan is an accountable government and cannot bombard inside the cities, and it will not.”
Insurgents roamed the city freely with chants blaring from their vehicles’ loudspeakers, according to residents reached by telephone. In a victory statement, the Taliban leader, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, promised that his forces would not commit the sort of atrocities for which the Taliban are known. It still remained unclear whether the United States-led coalition, which now has a limited mission of training and advising the Afghan forces, would directly join in the fight to regain Kunduz.
“The citizens of Kunduz city should be aware that the Islamic Emirate has no intention of transgressing against their personal property, carrying out extrajudicial killings, looting or breaching the inviolability of homes,” he said in the statement. On Tuesday morning, the spokesman for the United States forces in Afghanistan, Col. Brian Tribus, said the coalition had conducted one airstrike around Kunduz in the past 24 hours, “to eliminate a threat to coalition and Afghan forces.”
But the looting of institutions and businesses continued Tuesday, including the United Nations regional branch, the Afghan intelligence agency’s provincial office, two radio stations and a number of car dealerships. Even broken-down cars were being towed out of dealerships, residents said. A vault at the central bank’s Kunduz branch was blown up early Tuesday morning, residents said. In Washington, the Pentagon press secretary, Peter Cook, said American officials “strongly condemn the attacks in Kunduz,” and insisted that the Pentagon had confidence in the Afghan forces. But he added: “Obviously, this is a setback.”
“The Taliban are strolling around freely like this is their home,” said Mr. Rabbani, the council member, who like many Kunduz officials had retreated to the airport but was in touch with residents. “They took a lot of weapons from the intelligence agency’s office, weapons that were stocked for arming pro-government militias. We fear that there was cash and vehicles also.” He said a number of coalition forces were on the ground near Kunduz assisting and training the Afghans in their counteroffensive, but that as of now, “we’re not directly engaged in the fight outside of the airstrike.”
One man accused of being a thief, his mouth covered with material that bore illegible writing, was marched by Taliban fighters to the main city square, a resident said. He was forced to repent, and was freed after elders intervened and the man promised not to steal again. The hospitals in Kunduz city were overwhelmed with the flow of wounded, although the number of dead from the two days of fighting remained unclear. The main trauma center, run by Doctors Without Borders, had received 171 wounded, including 46 children, many of them in critical condition with gunshot wounds.
While the Afghan government has vowed to retake Kunduz soon, many analysts and officials predict a difficult fight ahead. The Taliban have penetrated residential areas, which make it costly to carry out airstrikes and operations involving heavy weaponry. “We have 130 patients spread throughout the wards, in the corridors and even in offices,” said Guilhem Molinie, the representative in Afghanistan for the doctors’ group. “With the hospital reaching its limit and fighting continuing, we are worried about being able to cope with any new influx of wounded.”
Additionally, because the insurgents have long controlled most of the districts surrounding the city and have been able to threaten highways in the neighboring provinces, it could be difficult for the Afghan government to resupply and reinforce its troops. Insurgents roamed the city freely on Tuesday with chants blaring from their vehicles’ loudspeakers, according to residents reached by telephone. One man accused of being a thief, his mouth covered with material that bore illegible writing, was marched by Taliban fighters to the main city square, a resident said. He was forced to repent, and was freed after elders intervened and the man promised not to steal again.
In a victory statement, the Taliban leader, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, promised that his forces would not commit the sort of atrocities for which the Taliban are known. “The citizens of Kunduz city should be aware that the Islamic Emirate has no intention of transgressing against their personal property, carrying out extrajudicial killings, looting or breaching the inviolability of homes,” he said in the statement.
But the looting of institutions and businesses continued, including the United Nations regional branch, the Afghan intelligence agency’s provincial office, two radio stations and a number of car dealerships. Even broken-down cars were being towed out of dealerships, residents said. A vault at the central bank’s Kunduz branch was blown up early Tuesday morning, residents said.
“The Taliban are strolling around freely like this is their home,” said Ghulam Rabbani Rabbani, a member of the Kunduz provincial council, who like many Kunduz officials had retreated to the airport but was in touch with residents. “They took a lot of weapons from the intelligence agency’s office, weapons that were stocked for arming pro-government militias. We fear that there was cash and vehicles also.”
Some residents still in Kunduz described being terrified at what was to come — either from Taliban rule or from the urban warfare that was likely to intensify.
“There is a state of dread and distress in the city, although the Taliban has come to the mosques and the streets to call on people and tell them that they are safe,” said Rahmatullah, a prominent Kunduz teacher who goes by just one name.
While the Afghan government has vowed to retake Kunduz soon, many analysts and officials predict a difficult fight ahead. The Taliban have penetrated populated residential areas, making it costly to carry out airstrikes and operations involving heavy weaponry.
Additionally, the insurgents have long controlled most of the districts surrounding the city and have been able to threaten highways in the neighboring provinces. That created grave difficulty for the government effort to resupply and reinforce the forces around Kunduz: As troops were sent from Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif, they faced roadside bombs and Taliban ambushes in many districts along the way.