(KABUL, Afghanistan) — The Taliban overran a base in northern Afghanistan, killing 17 soldiers, even as Afghan forces battled the insurgents for the fifth straight day in the eastern provincial capital of Ghazni on Tuesday, trying to flush them out of the city’s outskirts, officials said.

There were fears for the fate of the other troops from the base, known as Camp Chinaya, as the Taliban claimed that dozens had surrendered to them while others were captured in battle.

The attack in the north took place in Faryab province, in the district of Ghormach, according to the spokesman for the defense ministry, Ghafoor Ahmad Jawed. Along with the 17 troops killed, at least 19 soldiers were wounded, he said.

The Taliban had besieged the base, which housed about 140 Afghan troops, for three days before the massive push on it late on Monday night, said the local provincial council chief, Mohammad Tahir Rahmani.

Rahmani said the base fell to the Taliban after the soldiers, who had resisted the three-day onslaught, failed to get any reinforcements and ran out of ammunition, food and water. He said 43 troops were killed and wounded in the attack but didn’t give a breakdown.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack, saying 57 Afghan soldiers had surrendered to the Taliban while 17 others were captured in battle. He said eight military Humvees were also seized.

Meanwhile, Afghan security forces on Tuesday pushed back the Taliban from Ghazni, the provincial capital of a province with the same name, and were trying to flush the insurgents from the city’s outskirts.

The developments came on the fifth day after a massive Taliban attack on Ghazni. Hundreds of people have fled the fighting in the city, which has so far killed about 100 members of the Afghan security forces and at least 20 civilians.

Nasart Rahimi, a deputy spokesman at the Interior Ministry, said security forces were searching every inch of Ghazni for remaining Taliban fighters on Tuesday.

Military helicopters were supporting the ground forces’ operations in Ghazni, said Abdul Karim Arghandiwal, an army media officer in southeastern Afghanistan.

Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, denied the insurgents have been routed from Ghazni and said sporadic gunbattles were still ongoing.

The Taliban’s multipronged assault on the strategic city of Ghazni, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the capital, Kabul, began Friday. The insurgents overwhelmed the city’s defenses, pushed deep into Ghazni and captured several parts of it in a major show of force.

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.

The Taliban also destroyed a telecommunications tower on Ghazni’s outskirts, cutting off landline and cellphone links to the city.

The fighting brought civilian life in the city to a standstill, and also severely damaged Ghazni’s historic neighborhoods and cultural treasures.

In recent months, the Taliban have seized several districts across Afghanistan, staging near-daily attacks on security forces, but they have been unable to capture and hold urban areas.

The U.S. and NATO formally concluded their combat mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, but have since then repeatedly come to the aid of Afghan forces as they struggle to combat the resurgent Taliban</s>Image copyright EPA Image caption Some families have managed to get out of Ghazni, where food is running low

Food supplies in the Afghan city of Ghazni are running low, as a battle with the Taliban rages for a fourth day, the UN has warned.

"Life is getting hard for people, they can't get food or water," a man who fled the city on Sunday told the BBC.

More than 100 government soldiers and police have been killed since the Taliban stormed Ghazni from four sides early on Friday.

The city lies on the key highway between Kabul and Kandahar.

Control of it would effectively allow the Taliban to cut off southern Afghanistan from Kabul, the capital. The success of the militants' assault has come as a blow to the government of President Ashraf Ghani, which has now deployed an extra 1,000 troops.

The government and its Nato allies insist they are in control of Ghazni but reports suggest Taliban fighters continue to roam the streets and still control many government buildings. Phone communications are down, making it difficult to verify information coming out of the city.

In a news conference confirming the deaths of more than 100 members of the security forces, the government said it had killed up to 200 Taliban fighters.

Meanwhile, local media say a police officer has been killed by a bomb near the election commission's office in Kabul.

A protest was taking place at the time.

Those fleeing Ghazni say the situation for civilians is bleak, with at least 30 casualties among them, according to the government. More than 140 people have been wounded, hospital officials say, including security forces.

"Medication at the main hospital is reportedly becoming scarce and people are unable to safely bring casualties for treatment," the UN's humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan said in a statement on Monday.

"According to sporadic reports from within the city, many families have reportedly taken shelter in their houses and are unable to leave their homes. Vital telecommunications networks and the electricity supply are down in the city of 270,000 people which has impacted on the water supply, and food is also reportedly running low."

An activist from Ghazni who organised a protest march in Kabul on Monday said there was a humanitarian crisis.

People are facing "serious hunger", Enayat Nasir told the BBC. He said the government had been warned a week ago it appeared a Taliban attack was imminent.

"We said if you can't control the situation, Ghazni will collapse in one week. And that happened," he said.

Some Afghan lawmakers have also accused the government of ignoring their warnings about the worsening security situation in the region.

Late on Sunday, Mr Ghani said he was sending urgent reinforcements to the city "to consolidate operational gains". The US-led Nato mission in Afghanistan carried out 16 air strikes on Sunday and said "clearing operations" were ongoing.

It accused the Taliban of using civilians as cover and said the group had "achieved nothing".

Separately, it is reported that at least 100 Afghan army commandoes have gone missing in the east of Ghazni province, in Ajristan district. Officials have denied the reports.

The battle for Ghazni and attacks elsewhere in Afghanistan come as pressure continues on the Taliban to enter peace talks with the Afghan government.

Secret talks were recently held in Qatar between Taliban and US officials after an unprecedented three-day ceasefire during Eid celebrations in June that was largely respected by both sides.</s>WASHINGTON (AP) - A year after the Trump administration introduced its strategy for Afghanistan, the Taliban are asserting themselves on the battlefield even as U.S. officials talk up hopes for peace. That’s raising questions about the viability of the American game plan for ending a war that began when some of the current U.S. troops were in diapers.

A Taliban assault on Ghazni, a key city linking areas of Taliban influence barely 75 miles from Kabul, has killed about 100 Afghan security forces and 20 civilians since Friday, the Afghan Defense Ministry said. That has demonstrated the militants’ ability to attack, if not hold, a strategic center on the nation’s main highway, and highlighted the vulnerability of Afghan security forces.

Against that turbulent backdrop, some wonder whether President Donald Trump can resist pulling the plug on a war in which the U.S. is still spending $4 billion-plus a year just to keep Afghan forces afloat. He said when he introduced his strategy on Aug. 21, 2017, that his instinct was to withdraw entirely.

Fighting across the country has intensified in recent weeks despite a fleeting outbreak of peace earlier in the summer. Taliban and the Afghan government called separate, briefly overlapping, national cease fires in June, and the administration has made its own contact with the Taliban in hopes of nudging them into talks with Kabul.

The strategy revisits an approach that was tried, and failed, under President Barack Obama: increasing military pressure to push the Taliban into peace negotiations with the Afghan government. Signs point to Trump pressing ahead; he is about to send a new Army general, Scott Miller, to take charge of the U.S.-led coalition in Kabul.

David Sedney, who has worked on Afghan issues as a civilian, including multiple years in Kabul and at the Pentagon, since the war began in October 2001, said he believes the chances for peace are the best they’ve been.

“That doesn’t mean they’re great,” he said in an interview. “It just means they’re better.”

Among the meaningful factors at play, Sedney says, is Trump’s announcement a year ago that the U.S. would no longer set time limits on its military support for Afghanistan. This introduced an element of uncertainty for the Taliban, he said. On the other hand, the current U.S. push to draw Taliban leaders into peace negotiations with Kabul must succeed soon, he said, or risk following the failed path of previous efforts.

Trump also gave the U.S. military more leeway to attack the Taliban, and a few thousand additional U.S. troops were sent to Afghanistan this year as part of an effort to improve the effectiveness of training and advising Afghan ground forces, while also developing a small Afghan air force. The battlefield results have been mixed, however, as the Taliban have managed to preserve their influence in numerous districts.

Early in 2018 the U.S. military declared Afghanistan to be its top combat priority, supplanting the fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. Key U.S. warplanes, including A-10 ground attack aircraft, were switched to Afghanistan, and the Pentagon introduced a newly formed outfit called a Security Force Assistance Brigade of U.S. soldiers assigned to help Afghan forces closer to the battlefield.

With Ghazni under threat, the U.S. has dispatched military advisers to assist the Afghan forces in retaking the besieged city, and has launched airstrikes.

Seth Jones, a longtime watcher of Afghanistan and director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it was unlikely the Taliban will be able to hold populated areas of Ghazni for long. The militants have lacked sufficient popular support and military power to hold population centers.

But the Taliban’s ability to mass forces in multiple areas of Afghanistan at virtually the same time_including in Ghazni, Faryab, Baghlan, and Kunduz provinces - should worry Afghan and U.S. officials. Tribal leaders and local officials had been repeatedly warning Afghan policymakers in Kabul that the Taliban was preparing for a broad offensive in Ghazni, Jones said.

He remains skeptical the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan will work as he sees no sign that Trump is willing to take what could be a game-changing move: to target the top Taliban leaders in their Pakistan sanctuaries.

“Much like Bush and Obama, the Trump administration has other areas of the world that it would rather focus on, whether it’s the Korean Peninsula or Iran or China more broadly, and to move on, if possible, from Afghanistan,” Jones said. “If a settlement is the way to do that, then they are willing to give that a shot. The challenge, though, is that it is still not clear to me that the Taliban is seriously interested in peace negotiations” in terms that would be acceptable to the U.S. and the Afghan governments, including making a formal, public break with al-Qaida.

“The Taliban is willing to talk a little bit about talks, but not to sit down and formally negotiate,” he added. “I think they view time as in their favor and that the longer the war continues, the better their negotiating position.”

The group has growing regional clout. The Taliban assault on Ghazni began as the head of its political office was wrapping up a rare diplomatic foray in neighboring Uzbekistan.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who helped persuade Trump last summer not to quit Afghanistan, says it’s too early to render judgment on whether peace talks will emerge anytime soon.

“No doubt the strategy has confronted the Taliban with a reason to go to cease fires … and to go into discussions” about potential negotiations, he said Aug. 7. “But it is still early in that reconciliation process.”</s>Assaults by Taliban raise questions about US plan for peace

WASHINGTON (AP) — A year after the Trump administration introduced its strategy for Afghanistan, the Taliban are asserting themselves on the battlefield even as U.S. officials talk up hopes for peace. That's raising questions about the viability of the American game plan for ending a war that began when some of the current U.S. troops were in diapers.

A Taliban assault on Ghazni, a key city linking areas of Taliban influence barely 75 miles from Kabul, has killed about 100 Afghan security forces and 20 civilians since Friday, the Afghan Defense Ministry said. That has demonstrated the militants' ability to attack, if not hold, a strategic center on the nation's main highway, and highlighted the vulnerability of Afghan security forces.

In a reminder that U.S. troops and their families are paying a heavy price, even with Afghan forces in the lead combat role, the Pentagon announced Monday that a 36-year-old soldier, Staff Sgt. Reymund Rarogal Transfiguracion of Waikoloa, Hawaii, died Sunday of wounds sustained on a combat patrol in the Helmand province.

Against that turbulent backdrop, some wonder whether President Donald Trump can resist pulling the plug on a war in which the U.S. is still spending $4 billion-plus a year just to keep Afghan forces afloat. He said when he introduced his strategy on Aug. 21, 2017, that his instinct was to withdraw entirely.

Fighting across the country has intensified in recent weeks despite a fleeting outbreak of peace earlier in the summer. Taliban and the Afghan government called separate, briefly overlapping, national cease fires in June, and the administration has made its own contact with the Taliban in hopes of nudging them into talks with Kabul.

The strategy revisits an approach that was tried, and failed, under President Barack Obama: increasing military pressure to push the Taliban into peace negotiations with the Afghan government. Signs point to Trump pressing ahead; he is about to send a new Army general, Scott Miller, to take charge of the U.S.-led coalition in Kabul.

David Sedney, who has worked on Afghan issues as a civilian, including multiple years in Kabul and at the Pentagon, since the war began in October 2001, said he believes the chances for peace are the best they've been.

"That doesn't mean they're great," he said in an interview. "It just means they're better."

Among the meaningful factors at play, Sedney says, is Trump's announcement a year ago that the U.S. would no longer set time limits on its military support for Afghanistan. This introduced an element of uncertainty for the Taliban, he said. On the other hand, the current U.S. push to draw Taliban leaders into peace negotiations with Kabul must succeed soon, he said, or risk following the failed path of previous efforts.

Trump also gave the U.S. military more leeway to attack the Taliban, and a few thousand additional U.S. troops were sent to Afghanistan this year as part of an effort to improve the effectiveness of training and advising Afghan ground forces, while also developing a small Afghan air force. The battlefield results have been mixed, however, as the Taliban have managed to preserve their influence in numerous districts.

Early in 2018 the U.S. military declared Afghanistan to be its top combat priority, supplanting the fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. Key U.S. warplanes, including A-10 ground attack aircraft, were switched to Afghanistan, and the Pentagon introduced a newly formed outfit called a Security Force Assistance Brigade of U.S. soldiers assigned to help Afghan forces closer to the battlefield.

With Ghazni under threat, the U.S. has dispatched military advisers to assist the Afghan forces in retaking the besieged city, and has launched airstrikes.

Seth Jones, a longtime watcher of Afghanistan and director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it was unlikely the Taliban will be able to hold populated areas of Ghazni for long. The militants have lacked sufficient popular support and military power to hold population centers.

But the Taliban's ability to mass forces in multiple areas of Afghanistan at virtually the same time_including in Ghazni, Faryab, Baghlan, and Kunduz provinces — should worry Afghan and U.S. officials. Tribal leaders and local officials had been repeatedly warning Afghan policymakers in Kabul that the Taliban was preparing for a broad offensive in Ghazni, Jones said.

He remains skeptical the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan will work as he sees no sign that Trump is willing to take what could be a game-changing move: to target the top Taliban leaders in their Pakistan sanctuaries.

"Much like Bush and Obama, the Trump administration has other areas of the world that it would rather focus on, whether it's the Korean Peninsula or Iran or China more broadly, and to move on, if possible, from Afghanistan," Jones said. "If a settlement is the way to do that, then they are willing to give that a shot. The challenge, though, is that it is still not clear to me that the Taliban is seriously interested in peace negotiations" in terms that would be acceptable to the U.S. and the Afghan governments, including making a formal, public break with al-Qaida.

"The Taliban is willing to talk a little bit about talks, but not to sit down and formally negotiate," he added. "I think they view time as in their favor and that the longer the war continues, the better their negotiating position."

The group has growing regional clout. The Taliban assault on Ghazni began as the head of its political office was wrapping up a rare diplomatic foray in neighboring Uzbekistan.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who helped persuade Trump last summer not to quit Afghanistan, says it's too early to render judgment on whether peace talks will emerge anytime soon.

"No doubt the strategy has confronted the Taliban with a reason to go to cease fires ... and to go into discussions" about potential negotiations, he said Aug. 7. "But it is still early in that reconciliation process."</s>WASHINGTON (AP) - A year after the Trump administration introduced its strategy for Afghanistan, the Taliban are asserting themselves on the battlefield even as U.S. officials talk up hopes for peace. That's raising questions about the viability of the American game plan for ending a war that began when some of the current U.S. troops were in diapers.

A Taliban assault on Ghazni, a key city linking areas of Taliban influence barely 75 miles from Kabul, has killed about 100 Afghan security forces and 20 civilians since Friday, the Afghan Defense Ministry said. That has demonstrated the militants' ability to attack, if not hold, a strategic center on the nation's main highway, and highlighted the vulnerability of Afghan security forces.

Against that turbulent backdrop, some wonder whether President Donald Trump can resist pulling the plug on a war in which the U.S. is still spending $4 billion-plus a year just to keep Afghan forces afloat. He said when he introduced his strategy on Aug. 21, 2017, that his instinct was to withdraw entirely.

Fighting across the country has intensified in recent weeks despite a fleeting outbreak of peace earlier in the summer. Taliban and the Afghan government called separate, briefly overlapping, national cease fires in June, and the administration has made its own contact with the Taliban in hopes of nudging them into talks with Kabul.

The strategy revisits an approach that was tried, and failed, under President Barack Obama: increasing military pressure to push the Taliban into peace negotiations with the Afghan government. Signs point to Trump pressing ahead; he is about to send a new Army general, Scott Miller, to take charge of the U.S.-led coalition in Kabul.

David Sedney, who has worked on Afghan issues as a civilian, including multiple years in Kabul and at the Pentagon, since the war began in October 2001, said he believes the chances for peace are the best they've been.

"That doesn't mean they're great," he said in an interview. "It just means they're better."

Among the meaningful factors at play, Sedney says, is Trump's announcement a year ago that the U.S. would no longer set time limits on its military support for Afghanistan. This introduced an element of uncertainty for the Taliban, he said. On the other hand, the current U.S. push to draw Taliban leaders into peace negotiations with Kabul must succeed soon, he said, or risk following the failed path of previous efforts.

Trump also gave the U.S. military more leeway to attack the Taliban, and a few thousand additional U.S. troops were sent to Afghanistan this year as part of an effort to improve the effectiveness of training and advising Afghan ground forces, while also developing a small Afghan air force. The battlefield results have been mixed, however, as the Taliban have managed to preserve their influence in numerous districts.

Early in 2018 the U.S. military declared Afghanistan to be its top combat priority, supplanting the fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. Key U.S. warplanes, including A-10 ground attack aircraft, were switched to Afghanistan, and the Pentagon introduced a newly formed outfit called a Security Force Assistance Brigade of U.S. soldiers assigned to help Afghan forces closer to the battlefield.

With Ghazni under threat, the U.S. has dispatched military advisers to assist the Afghan forces in retaking the besieged city, and has launched airstrikes.

Seth Jones, a longtime watcher of Afghanistan and director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it was unlikely the Taliban will be able to hold populated areas of Ghazni for long. The militants have lacked sufficient popular support and military power to hold population centers.

But the Taliban's ability to mass forces in multiple areas of Afghanistan at virtually the same time_including in Ghazni, Faryab, Baghlan, and Kunduz provinces - should worry Afghan and U.S. officials. Tribal leaders and local officials had been repeatedly warning Afghan policymakers in Kabul that the Taliban was preparing for a broad offensive in Ghazni, Jones said.

He remains skeptical the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan will work as he sees no sign that Trump is willing to take what could be a game-changing move: to target the top Taliban leaders in their Pakistan sanctuaries.

"Much like Bush and Obama, the Trump administration has other areas of the world that it would rather focus on, whether it's the Korean Peninsula or Iran or China more broadly, and to move on, if possible, from Afghanistan," Jones said. "If a settlement is the way to do that, then they are willing to give that a shot. The challenge, though, is that it is still not clear to me that the Taliban is seriously interested in peace negotiations" in terms that would be acceptable to the U.S. and the Afghan governments, including making a formal, public break with al-Qaida.

"The Taliban is willing to talk a little bit about talks, but not to sit down and formally negotiate," he added. "I think they view time as in their favor and that the longer the war continues, the better their negotiating position."

The group has growing regional clout. The Taliban assault on Ghazni began as the head of its political office was wrapping up a rare diplomatic foray in neighboring Uzbekistan.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who helped persuade Trump last summer not to quit Afghanistan, says it's too early to render judgment on whether peace talks will emerge anytime soon.

"No doubt the strategy has confronted the Taliban with a reason to go to cease fires ... and to go into discussions" about potential negotiations, he said Aug. 7. "But it is still early in that reconciliation process."</s>GHAZNI, Afghanistan -- The Afghan government declared Saturday that there was no longer a cause for concern about the strategic southeastern city of Ghazni falling to the Taliban.

However, a reporter for The New York Times who entered the city Saturday morning found insurgents confidently in control at every intersection. At Sanayi High School, where the day before there had been a large Afghan police check post, now there were a half-dozen Taliban fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and AK-47s.

"As a civilian your life is important to us, so you should go back to your village or home now," their leader, wearing a black turban, told the reporter. "We don't want to kill you, but we have orders not to allow civilians out in the city."

Both the government and the insurgents claimed to be in control. With cellphone towers destroyed, communications were sporadic and information from Ghazni was scarce.

A city of about 280,000, Ghazni is on the main highway between Kabul, the capital, and the country's second-largest city, Kandahar.

Taking Ghazni, even briefly, would be the Taliban's most important victory yet. While they had briefly overrun the small cities of Farah, earlier this year, and Kunduz twice, in 2015 and 2016, neither of those cities have the symbolic and military importance of Ghazni.

Taliban control of the city would not only cut off northern Afghanistan and the capital from the traditional Taliban homelands in the south, it would also prove a severe defeat for the U.S. and Afghan strategy of holding population centers rather than territory.

Afghans also revere Ghazni as a seat of ancient culture, once the capital of a vast empire that ruled modern-day India. Its many monuments and archaeological sites earned it a designation as the Asian capital of Islamic culture in 2013.

Residents fleeing the city described streets littered with the unrecovered bodies of policemen, insurgents and civilians a day after the Taliban staged a large-scale attack in an effort to overrun the strategic city. And they saw no sign of any government counterattack. Government radio and television was shut down and only Radio Shariat, a Taliban station, was broadcasting.

It was a picture completely at odds with what Afghan officials were saying in Kabul.

"Overall, the situation is under our control in Ghazni, and the problems are not that serious," Najib Danish, spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, said at a news conference. "The concern about the collapse of the province to the Taliban is gone now."

Danish confirmed that 25 Afghan security forces, as well as one Afghan journalist, had been killed in the fighting.

Along a 3-mile stretch of the city, there were four Taliban checkpoints, each with a commandeered car and a pair of motorcycles among four fighters, who appeared on their guard but unworried.

There was no sign of U.S. airstrikes or helicopters Saturday, as there had been the day before.

On the city's outskirts, families were streaming out of the city. A woman named Mina, a widow traveling with her five small children, said insurgents had come to her house the night before and set up a fighting position on her roof.

"You can stay downstairs if you want to -- or leave, it's OK -- but we are going to fight from your home against the police," she said the Taliban told her. She and her children carried only a small bag of clothing each and the children were barefoot. She said on the way she had counted at least 17 bodies in the street -- police, Taliban and civilians.

"I stopped counting because we were too scared," she said.

Taliban sources had little to say Saturday, other than claiming to have destroyed many checkpoints in the city. They said they were continuing to fight.

The Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, did claim in a Twitter post that the insurgents had "liberated" the city's prison, releasing everyone inside. He did not say how many prisoners were inside.

Afghan reinforcements traveling to Ghazni from Gardez, to the east, and from Kabul, to the north, encountered repeated ambushes, destroyed bridges and delays, according to Afghan officials.</s>The Taliban overran a base in northern Afghanistan, killing 17 soldiers, even as Afghan forces battled the insurgents for the fifth straight day in the eastern provincial capital of Ghazni on Tuesday, trying to flush them out of the city's outskirts, officials said.

There were fears for the fate of the other troops from the base, known as Camp Chinaya, as the Taliban claimed that dozens had surrendered to them while others were captured in battle.

The attack in the north took place in Faryab province, in the district of Ghormach, according to the spokesman for the defense ministry, Ghafoor Ahmad Jawed. Along with the 17 troops killed, at least 19 soldiers were wounded, he said.

The Taliban had besieged the base, which housed about 140 Afghan troops, for three days before the massive push on it late on Monday night, said the local provincial council chief, Mohammad Tahir Rahmani.

Rahmani said the base fell to the Taliban after the soldiers, who had resisted the three-day onslaught, failed to get any reinforcements and ran out of ammunition, food and water. He said 43 troops were killed and wounded in the attack but didn't give a breakdown.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack, saying 57 Afghan soldiers had surrendered to the Taliban while 17 others were captured in battle. He said eight military Humvees were also seized.

Meanwhile, Afghan security forces on Tuesday pushed back the Taliban from Ghazni, the provincial capital of a province with the same name, and were trying to flush the insurgents from the city's outskirts.

The developments came on the fifth day after a massive Taliban attack on Ghazni. Hundreds of people have fled the fighting in the city, which has so far killed about 100 members of the Afghan security forces and at least 20 civilians.

Nasart Rahimi, a deputy spokesman at the Interior Ministry, said security forces were searching every inch of Ghazni for remaining Taliban fighters on Tuesday.

Military helicopters were supporting the ground forces' operations in Ghazni, said Abdul Karim Arghandiwal, an army media officer in southeastern Afghanistan.

Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, denied the insurgents have been routed from Ghazni and said sporadic gunbattles were still ongoing.

The Taliban's multipronged assault on the strategic city of Ghazni, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the capital, Kabul, began Friday. The insurgents overwhelmed the city's defenses, pushed deep into Ghazni and captured several parts of it in a major show of force.

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.

The Taliban also destroyed a telecommunications tower on Ghazni's outskirts, cutting off landline and cellphone links to the city.

The fighting brought civilian life in the city to a standstill, and also severely damaged Ghazni's historic neighborhoods and cultural treasures.

In recent months, the Taliban have seized several districts across Afghanistan, staging near-daily attacks on security forces, but they have been unable to capture and hold urban areas.

The U.S. and NATO formally concluded their combat mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, but have since then repeatedly come to the aid of Afghan forces as they struggle to combat the resurgent Taliban</s>The Latest on developments in Afghanistan after a surge in Taliban attacks (all times local):

The spokesman for the Defense Ministry in Kabul says the Taliban have overrun a military base in northern Afghanistan, killing 17 soldiers and wounding at least 19 troops.

Ghafor Ahmad Jawed says the insurgents overrun the base late on Monday night in Faryab province, in the district of Ghormach, after besieging it for three days.

The local provincial council chief, Mohammad Tahir Rahmani, says 43 troops were killed and wounded in the attack but didn't give a breakdown.

He says the Taliban attack succeeded in taking control of the base, known as Camp Chinaya, which housed about 140 Afghan troops.

Rahmani says the base fell to the Taliban after the soldiers resisted the three-day onslaught. He says they didn't get any reinforcements and ran out of ammunition, food and water.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack in Faryab. He says 57 Afghan soldiers surrendered to the Taliban while 17 others were captured in battle. He says eight military Humvees were seized.

Afghan officials say security forces have pushed back the Taliban from Ghazni and are now trying to flush the insurgents from the city's outskirts.

The operations come on the fifth day after a massive Taliban attack on the provincial capital of Ghazni.

Hundreds of people have fled the fighting in Ghazni, which has killed about 100 members of the Afghan security forces and at least 20 civilians.

Nasart Rahimi, a deputy spokesman at the Interior Ministry, says security forces were searching every inch of Ghazni for Taliban fighters on Tuesday.

Abdul Karim Arghandiwal, an army media officer in southeastern Afghanistan, says military helicopters are supporting the ground forces' operations in Ghazni.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid denies the insurgents have been routed from Ghazni and says sporadic gunbattles are still ongoing.</s>Taliban fighters have overrun an Afghan National Army operations base in northern Afghanistan while, further to the south, security forces are battling for a fifth consecutive day against Taliban militants who seized the city of Ghazni.

Defense Ministry spokesman Ghafor Ahmad Jawed said Taliban fighters gained control of the base in the Ghormach district of the northern province of Faryab late on August 13.

Jawed said 17 Afghan soldiers were killed and at least 19 wounded in the battle.

An army spokesman, Mohammad Hanif Rezaee, said 100 Afghan soldiers were at the base, known as Camp Chinaya, when the Taliban began their assault against it on August 12.

“It is a tragedy that the base fell to the enemy,” Rezaee said. “Some soldiers were killed, some captured, and some fled to nearby hills.”

Hashim Otaq, a member of Afghanistan’s parliament who represents Faryab Province, said about 40 Afghan soldiers had been captured by the Taliban.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said 57 Afghan soldiers surrendered to the Taliban and another 17 were captured. He said Taliban fighters seized eight military Humvees — four-wheeled armored vehicles that had been provided to the Afghan forces by the United States.

Faryab Provincial Council Chief Mohammad Tahir Rahmani said the base fell to the Taliban because the Afghan soldiers did not receive reinforcements and had run out of ammunition, food, and water.

The battle began after the Taliban launched an assault early on August 10 and captured Ghazni, a strategic city located on the main highway linking Kabul with the southern city of Kandahar.

Afghan officials said security forces, backed by air support, later pushed the militants back from most of Ghazni, which is Afghanistan’s seventh largest city.

Interior Ministry spokesman Nasart Rahimi said on August 14 that security forces were searching the city of 270,000 people for Taliban fighters.

Ghazni Provincial Council member Nasir Ahmad Faqiri wrote on Facebook that Taliban forces had slowly retreated from within the city to areas on Ghazni’s outskirts that are under Taliban control.

However, the militant group said sporadic gunbattles were still ongoing inside the city.

The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says between 110 and 150 civilians reportedly have been killed or injured in the fighting, adding that the number of civilian casualties still needs to be verified.

Late on August 13, Defense Minister Tareq Shah Bahrami said about 100 police officers and soldiers were killed in the battle, along with at least 20 civilians. Bahrami said 341 Taliban fighters were killed or wounded in the battle for Ghazni.

Information from Ghazni was difficult to verify with telecommunications services being shut down due to the clashes.

Afghanistan’s Western-backed government in Kabul has been struggling to fend off the Taliban and other militant groups since the withdrawal of most NATO troops in 2014.

With reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters

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• Opinion: Did Trump forget his own Afghanistan strategy?</s>KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Four days of ferocious fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban over a key provincial capital has claimed the lives of about 100 Afghan policemen and soldiers and at least 20 civilians, the defense minister said Monday.

The staggering numbers provided by Gen. Tareq Shah Bahrami were the first official casualty toll since the Taliban launched a massive assault on Ghazni, the capital of Ghazni province, last Friday.

The multi-pronged assault overwhelmed the city's defenses and allowed insurgents to capture several parts of it. It was a major show of force by the Taliban, who infiltrated deep into this strategic city barely 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the capital, Kabul.

The United States has sent military advisers to aid Afghan forces.

The fall of Ghazni, a city of 270,000 people, would mark an important victory for the Taliban. It would also cut off a key highway linking Kabul to the southern provinces, the Taliban's traditional heartland.

Bahrami, the defense minister, spoke to reporters at a press conference in Kabul on Monday. He said the casualty figures are not yet definite and that the numbers might change. He didn't offer a breakdown of the casualties but Interior Minister Wais Ahmad Barmak said nearly 70 policemen were among those killed.

Bahrami said about 1,000 additional troops have been sent to Ghazni and helped prevent the city from falling into Taliban hands. He also said 194 insurgents, including 12 leaders, were killed — with Pakistani, Chechen and Arabs foreign fighters among the dead.

The attack on Ghazni began on Friday, with insurgents infiltrating people's homes and slipping out into the night to attack Afghan forces.

The Taliban also destroyed a telecommunications tower on the city's outskirts, cutting off all landline and cell phone links to the city and making it difficult to confirm details of the fighting.

Afghan authorities have insisted that the city would not fall to the Taliban and that Afghan forces remained in control of key government positions and other institutions there.

Najib Danish, the Interior Ministry's spokesman, said earlier on Monday that reinforcements have been sent to Ghazni to clear the remaining Taliban.

Col. Fared Mashal, the province's police chief, said the majority of the insurgents fighting in Ghazni are foreigners, including Pakistanis and Chechens.

"The Taliban have failed in reaching their goal," Mashal added.

Over the past months, the insurgents have seized several districts across Afghanistan, staging near-daily attacks on Afghan security forces, but have been unable to capture and hold urban areas.

The United States and NATO formally concluded their combat mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, but have since then repeatedly come to the aid of Afghan forces as they struggle to combat the resurgent Taliban.

The United Nations has expressed its concerns for the civilians caught up in the fighting in Ghazni.

Ghazni's residents "have seen their city turn into a battlefield since Friday morning, with fighting and clashes reportedly still ongoing. We have received initial reports of a number of civilian casualties and of people trying to reach safe areas outside of the city," said Rik Peeperkorn, acting U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan.

Ghazni's hospitals are running out of medicines and people are unable to safely bring casualties, Peeperkorn's statement added. Electricity, water supply and food are also running low, the statement said.

"Parties to the conflict need to ensure that access to medical services is not denied and respect for medical facilities and staff is upheld," Peeperkom said.

Meanwhile, the International Federation of Journalists and the Afghan Independent Journalists Association jointly put out a statement condemning the violence in Ghazni and attacks on journalists there.

Media technician Mohammad Dawood was among those killed in Ghazni, the statement said, and also condemned the torching of Ghazni's radio and television station.

Associated Press reporter Mohammad Anwar Danishyar in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.
More than 100 Afghan soldiers and police, 13 civilians and hundreds of Taliban are killed during the ongoing offensive in Ghazni.