ISLAMABAD - Officials in Afghanistan confirmed Monday a Taliban prisoner has killed at least eight policemen, including three senior officers, after covertly seizing an assault rifle from a guard at the detention facility in southern Zabul province.

The incident happened while security guards were offering evening prayers late Sunday at the Shar-e-Safa district jail, a police officer told VOA. Ghulam Jilani said the assailant sprayed the unarmed group of personnel with bullets. The officer promised to provide more details later in the day.

A security official in Shar-e-Safa, disclosed to VOA on the condition of anonymity that Afghan forces swiftly engaged the armed prisoner and the firefight with him continued into Monday morning.

The official suspected the Taliban detainee had managed to seize weapons from other slain officers, preventing prison guards from ending the siege, though the assailant’s fate was still not known.

The latest security forces' casualties came a day after the Afghan ministers of defense and interior acknowledged that Taliban battlefield attacks in recent weeks have inflicted some of the worst casualties on Afghan National Army (ANA) and police forces.

While briefing the upper house of parliament or Senate on Sunday, Interior Minister Wais Ahmad Barmak disclosed that "daily, 30 ANA and police personnel get killed.”

Afghan Defense Minister Tariq Shah Bahrami told the Senate session that in the last one month alone, the ANA has suffered 1,231 casualties, including 513 fatalities.

Around 14,000 Afghan security forces were killed between April 2016 and July 2018, according to the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). Insurgents have since intensified battlefield attacks around Afghanistan, inflicting more losses and capturing new territory.

Meanwhile, security forces raided a Taliban-run detention center in the central-eastern Maidan Wardak province late Sunday and rescued eight prisoners, mostly personnel of the Afghan Special Forces.

General Wais Samimi, the provincial police commander, told VOA the rescue operation also killed 40 insurgents, including their shadow district chief.

Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujuahid, claimed Afghan and U.S. forces jointly conducted the raid and it targeted a civilian compound. He went on to assert that the security action in the Jaghato district killed 14 civilians, including women and children. The Taliban’s claims are often inflated.

Afghanistan’s Pajhwok news agency quoted villagers as telling it that foreign forces were part of the raid and those killed in it were all civilians.

It was not possible to independently verify the claims.</s>Special Forces Rescued Six Soldiers from Taliban Prison in Ghazni

Afghan special forces have released six soldiers including two members of the Afghan Presidential Protective Service (PPS) during a night raid from a Taliban prison in south of Afghanistan, officials said Monday.

Ghafoor Javid spokesman for the ministry of defense said that the operation was conducted in Jaghatu district of Ghazni province last night.

Javid added that Taliban had issued a verdict for the execution of these soldiers.

He further claimed that at least 11 Taliban militants were also killed during the operation.

Taliban has not made a comment about the report yet.

Ghazni is among the volatile provinces in Afghanistan where the Taliban insurgents are actively operating in a number of its districts and usually carrying out coordinated attacks against government forces.</s>KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Southern Afghanistan”s largest city, Kandahar, is slipping back under Taliban control as overstretched U.S. troops focus on clearing insurgents from the countryside — a potentially alarming setback for President Barack Obama”s war strategy.

Afghan authorities promise a counteroffensive against the militants in Kandahar — a pledge that appears aimed primarily at boosting public morale after a devastating bombing killed 43 people on Tuesday.

Losing Kandahar, a city of nearly 1 million and the Taliban”s former headquarters, would be a huge symbolic blow because it is effectively the capital of the ethnic Pashtun-dominated south, the main battlefield of the Afghan war.

It is difficult to measure the extent of Taliban control, and NATO officials publicly discount the possibility that Kandahar is about to fall to the militants. Thousands of U.S. and Canadian troops are deployed throughout the province and around the city, which includes a major NATO base. NATO officials say the U.S. troop buildup in Afghanistan will enable them to send more troops into Kandahar. “Because there”s one bombing, it doesn”t mean the situation is going down the tubes,” said Maj. Mario Couture, a spokesman for NATO in Kandahar province.

Nevertheless, many Afghans believe more Taliban forces are operating clandestinely in the city, while the Islamist movement tightens its grip on districts just outside the urban center.

As guerrillas, the Taliban doubtless don”t want to capture and run the city. Instead their goal is probably to wield enough influence to block any government efforts to expand services, prevent international relief agencies from operating there, force merchants to pay protection money and undermine the government”s image in one of the country”s major cities.

“The Taliban are inside the city. They are very active. They can do anything they want,” said an Afghan employee of an international aid organization who requested anonymity because he feared reprisals from the militants.

The Taliban”s resurgence in Kandahar city, the movement”s main power base during the 1990s, has been slow and gradual over the past four years, said an international security official who is familiar with the area.

These days, the Taliban control many of the city”s streets at night, the official said. Residents who spoke to The Associated Press also said militants were active at night, though they did not describe them as being in control.

The security official also pointed to a number of attacks, aside from Tuesday”s bombing, that indicate the Taliban want to take over the city. One was last year”s brazen bomb and rocket attack on a major prison that freed hundreds of militants and other prisoners.

The militants have targeted tribal elders in surrounding districts, and have a notable presence in the city”s north, south and west, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.</s>GHAZNI, Afghanistan — A Taliban spokesman said Saturday that two sick, female South Korean hostages would be released “soon” for the sake of good relations between the Taliban and South Korea. Neither the international Red Cross or the Afghan government could immediately confirm the claim.

The spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said the two women would be freed because they are sick. He said the decision had been made by the Taliban”s high commanders, but he said it had not yet been decided when the women would be freed.

Two Taliban leaders and four South Korean officials met Saturday for the second day of face-to-face talks over the fate of 21 South Korean hostages being held since July 19 by the militants. The two said earlier Saturday that the Koreans would “definitely” be released and possibly as soon as “today or tomorrow.”

“The Taliban”s big commanders have decided for the sake of good relations between the Taliban and the Korean people that without any conditions they are soon going to release two sick women,” Ahmadi said.

Franz Rauchenstein, an official with the International Committee of the Red Cross, said neither the Taliban nor South Korean officials had talked to the Red Cross about facilitating the release of hostages, and that he could not confirm that two women were to be freed.

Marajudin Pathan, the local governor, said he had not heard that two women would be released and that it hadn”t been discussed during negotiations Saturday. He said talks would continue on Sunday.

“Qari Ahmadi (the Taliban spokesman) is somewhere in Pakistan,” Pathan said. “He”s just running his mouth. They (the Taliban) are always giving contradictory statements.”

Pathan said he didn”t think the hostage crisis would be resolved by prisoner release, “but we”ll see if it”s by some other avenue.”

He refused to specify if that meant a ransom payment, though he has said previously he thought money would resolve the situation.

Mullah Qari Bashir, one of the Taliban negotiators, said the face-to-face talks were going well and that the Taliban were sticking with their original demand — that 21 Taliban prisoners be released from prisons in Afghanistan.

“God willing the government (of Afghanistan) and the government of Korea will accept this,” Bashir said outside the Ghazni office of the Afghan Red Cross, which is acting as a neutral intermediary. “Definitely these people will be released.”</s>Taliban Ghani? Why is everyone silent? I thought Taliban were created by the evil Pakis to kill peace loving and innocent Afghans?</s>TIRINKOT (Pajhwok): Dozens of Taliban militants have been killed and scores of others wounded during a joint operation by Afghan and NATO forces in this capital city of central Uruzgan province, sources said on Tuesday.

Two Afghan commando personnel were also killed and two others wounded in the operation that commenced last night and ended on Tuesday afternoon in Khanqa area of Tirinkot.

Conflicting accounts were given about Taliban’s casualties in the operation. ANA commander in Uruzgan Gen. Rahmat Shah Qimati said dozens of insurgents were killed and wounded in the operation.

He said nothing about casualties to security forces, but another military commander Zamari said two commandos were killed and as many wounded in the firefight. He said 35 Taliban were killed and a large number of others wounded.

But area police officer Malak Zainullah put the Taliban’s death toll at 60 with scores others wounded.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousaf Ahamdi said three commandos were killed in the operation, but said nothing about their own casualties.</s>ISLAMABAD — Pakistan sent helicopter gunships and troops to attack Taliban militants Sunday in a district covered by a peace deal after strong U.S. pressure on the nuclear-armed nation to confront insurgents advancing in its northwest.

At least 31 people were killed in the offensive, which sent some residents of Lower Dir district fleeing carrying small children and few belongings.

The operation appeared to endanger a peace pact struck with Taliban militants in neighboring Swat Valley, although a top official insisted the deal was “intact.” Another official demanded the insurgents disarm, but a Taliban spokesman said the militants would not give up their weapons.

The Lower Dir offensive also came ahead of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari”s scheduled meeting with President Barack Obama in early May, but Pakistani officials denied outside pressure influenced the move.

Television footage from the district showed at least two helicopter gunships heading toward the mountains. Troops guarded a road blocked with paramilitary trucks, while some families sat nearby. Another family headed away in a vehicle packed with luggage.

The operation killed at least 30 militants, including a commander, plus one paramilitary soldier, according to an army statement and Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik. The statement said the operation was launched at the request of the provincial government and local residents, but did not detail its scope or expected duration.

The government agreed to impose Islamic law in Swat and surrounding districts that make up Malakand Division if the Taliban there would end their violent campaign in the one-time tourist haven. Critics labeled the deal a “surrender” to the militants and warned Swat could turn into a haven for allies of al-Qaida.

In recent days, Taliban forces from Swat began entering Buner, a neighboring district which lies just 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. Officials said most of the insurgents pulled out of Buner on Friday amid reports of possible military action, and threats that the government would scrap the deal.

Losing either Lower or Upper Dir to militants would be a blow not only for Pakistan but also for the U.S. because a part of the region borders Afghanistan, where the U.S. is sending thousands more troops to shore up the faltering war effort against a resurgent Taliban.

Farhatullah Babar, spokesman for Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, insisted the offensive did not render the peace agreement moot.

He said the government would fulfill its pledge to establish an Islamic judicial system in Malakand, a long-standing demand of local residents exhausted by the inefficient regular courts — and a grievance exploited by the Taliban.

“The peace deal is intact,” Babar said. “At the same time the government is determined to root out the militants hell-bent on destroying the law and order situation.”

But Malik, the head of the Interior Ministry, even spoke of the deal in past tense when saying the Swat militants had to disarm.

“Enough is enough,” Malik said. “There is no option for them except to lay down their arms, because the government is serious now to flush them out.”

Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan said the militants, “do not lay down weapons. Instead they snatch them.” He said the Taliban were still trying to abide by the deal but wanted to make sure the newly created Islamic courts had full authority.

Amir Izzat, a spokesman for the hard-line cleric who mediated the deal, said the “operation is a clear violation” of the agreement and warned that the government would be responsible for the fallout.

A similar peace deal attempted in Swat last year fell apart within a few months, and officials said it gave the militants there a chance to regroup and rearm, making them a more challenging enemy when the army resumed its fight in the valley.

Mahmood Shah, a former security chief for Pakistan”s tribal regions, said the army operation in Dir was a clear signal to the Swat Taliban that they must stop entering neighboring districts. He predicted it would be a “limited” operation.

“The government is sincere in the deal, but the militants don”t seem to be,” he said. “The government wants them to lay down their weapons, and when they don”t, a message goes to everywhere that they have some other agenda instead having an interest in peace. If the government goes for an operation in Swat, this time it will be much stronger and bigger as compared to previous one.”

Pakistan”s attempts to battle militants using military offensives have also had mixed results.

In Bajur tribal region, for instance, officials said earlier this year they”d vanquished the Taliban after a monthslong operation, but recent reports indicate the militants there are regrouping.

The Pakistani military”s ability or willingness to take on the Taliban has been questioned by some top U.S. officials in recent days, even as they ponder giving Pakistan billions more in military and other aid.

Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, said Pakistan”s leaders should focus on the looming threat posed by extremists within their borders, instead of their rivalry with India.

“The most important, most pressing threat to the very existence of their country is the threat posed by the internal extremists and groups such as the Taliban and the syndicated extremists,” Petraeus told a congressional panel.

Babar said the offensive Sunday had nothing to do with American pressure. “There is no question of pressure by anybody,” Babar said.

Some two years worth of clashes between the military and insurgents in Swat killed hundreds of people and displaced up to a third of the valley”s 1.5 million people.

Associated Press writers Asif Shahzad and Zarar Khan in Islamabad and Rasool Dawar in Miran Shah contributed to this report.</s>An ominous orange glow lit up the sky for miles around. It was after midnight on Aug. 11, and the city of Ghazni, less than 100 miles from Kabul, was on fire. Approaching the outskirts of town in a convoy of heavily armored 22-ton vehicles, the team of Green Berets from Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) Team 1333 took it as the first sign that it wasn’t going to be an easy night.

The group was one of three U.S. Army Special Forces–led units converging on Ghazni to save it from the Taliban, which had laid siege to the city over the previous 24 hours in a surprise attack. And the closer the Green Berets got, the worse it looked. Approaching the city, ODA 1333 had to muscle their massive vehicles around bomb craters and abandoned big-rig trucks that the Islamist insurgents had set up as roadblocks.

The dismal obstacle course wasn’t just proof that the insurgents had the upper hand over the 1,500 Afghan police and soldiers based in the city, even though those forces were flush with sophisticated American-supplied weaponry. The team soon discovered the wreckage-strewn approach to the city had become a shooting gallery for hidden Taliban.

Rocket-propelled grenades and machine-gun fire came screaming in from a tree line to the east—small bursts at first, then all at once. Streaks of heavy fire glowed green in the commandos’ night-vision goggles as two- and three-man Taliban teams shot rockets at the Special Forces before vanishing into nearby scrubland. The U.S. forces returned fire with rapid bursts from the .50-caliber machine guns perched atop the vehicles. At one point, one of the men shouted, “Where the f-ck are [the airstrikes]?” Almost on cue, a lumbering AC-130 gun ship circling above began showering 105-mm cannon fire on Taliban positions below. Apache attack helicopters, A-10 attack planes, F-16 fighter jets and MQ-9 Reaper drones also delivered airstrikes. The road into the city “was just a sh-t show,” one U.S. soldier tells TIME.

Back in Washington, the war in Afghanistan often seems like an afterthought. According to the Pentagon, combat missions officially ended in 2014, U.S. forces serve only as “advisers,” and peace may be at hand. An unprecedented three-day June cease-fire was followed by secret U.S.-Taliban talks in Qatar in July. “We’re seeing the strategy is fundamentally working and advancing us toward reconciliation, even though it may not be playing out the way that we anticipated,” General John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said on Aug. 22.

But in August, America’s 17-year enemy in Afghanistan, the Taliban, launched a coordinated set of assaults around the country ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. With echoes of the Tet offensive carried out by the Viet Cong during the Vietnamese New Year in 1968, the Taliban attack targeted vulnerable outposts peppered across seven provinces and claimed the lives of scores of Afghan forces.

The assault on Ghazni, which engulfed nearly all of the city’s 19 districts, was the most orchestrated operation of this nationwide onslaught. And the Taliban’s surprising effectiveness—capturing districts, nearly toppling a provincial capital and briefly ­cutting off the main north-south highway just 60 miles from the capital—raises troubling questions about the state of the war. The battle was a major test of the Trump Administration’s long-term military strategy, which hinges on defending population centers while ceding much of the remote countryside to the Taliban. It proved that U.S. forces still routinely rush to save Afghan forces struggling to contain a resurgent Taliban. That hard truth suggests the plan to train, advise and assist Afghans so they may one day defend themselves masks the costs the U.S. is still paying nearly two decades into the war, and a year after President Trump announced a new strategy to defeat the enemy. As Ghazni shows, the “assist” part is often difficult to distinguish from a traditional American combat mission.

Nine Americans were evacuated from the battlefield by helicopter because of injuries incurred by the Taliban’s multiday barrage of roadside bombs, mortar shells and rockets. At least two soldiers received Purple Hearts after suffering serious wounds. Seven out of 10 armored vehicles in ODA 1333’s convoy were lost to battle damage. The Special Forces team considered themselves lucky: a shoulder-fired rocket had a near miss with a medevac helicopter retrieving an injured soldier.

The carnage in this city of 150,000 shows how devastating the war remains for Afghans. An average of seven Afghan adults and two children were killed every day in the first six months of this year, according to the latest United Nations data, with another 19 civilians injured each day. The figures show 2018 is on track to be the deadliest year of the war. A generation of American military officers who arrived here after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as fresh-faced lieutenants or majors have lived through the ferocious fighting. Some are now multiple-­tour colonels or generals, with children who have inherited the burden of waging America’s longest war. Most of the soldiers—American and Afghan—­who battled to take back Ghazni were in grade school on Sept. 11 and unable to foresee the countless ways the attacks would shape their lives.

This account of the multiday siege of Ghazni, described to TIME in on-the-ground interviews with dozens of U.S. and Afghan soldiers, commanders and citizens, offers a rare glimpse into the ongoing American military effort in Afghanistan. The extent of the destruction has not been previously reported. The Pentagon doesn’t make the information publicly available, and TIME witnessed it only after gaining approval for an embedded deployment in Afghanistan after months of trying, long before the August offensive began.

The battle for Ghazni didn’t come out of nowhere. The Taliban sensed an opportunity in the widening chaos created by years of war. For several months, five U.S. Special Forces teams, working with some 150 Afghan commandos, had left the area to fight a different threat: a growing Islamic State affiliate known as ISIS-Khorasan, or ISIS-K. An offshoot of the Syria-based terrorist group, it formed in Afghanistan in 2015 and has terrorized towns in eastern Nangarhar province through public executions, assaults on government buildings and suicide attacks.

The effort to repel ISIS-K was one of the largest joint operations ever conducted between U.S. and Afghan special forces. By August 2018, ISIS-K had lost nearly 200 fighters and most its territory. The joint mission did not go unnoticed. Over the summer, the U.S. military received intelligence that the Taliban was aware the Americans and Afghan commandos based around Ghazni were gone, Special Forces sources tell TIME.

The Taliban couldn’t believe their good fortune. Moving weapons and fighters into Ghazni isn’t a difficult task. There are many ways to smuggle materiel into the city, through ancient trading lines or unassuming vehicles that blend in with traffic. Some local officials believe security personnel guarding Ghazni’s perimeter granted the Taliban free entry.

Despite the intelligence tip, the Taliban’s initial attacks on Aug. 10 caught Washington and Kabul flat-footed. An estimated 1,000 Taliban fighters stormed the city and surrounding districts. The insurgents attacked government buildings, assaulted the central prison, destroyed a telecommunications tower and set fire to a local television station. Afghan local police and military officials temporarily lost control of several areas of the city.

U.S. Special Operations Command headquarters scrambled to respond, deploying three 12-man Green Beret teams from 1st Special Forces Group along with their Afghan partnered force from the 2nd Commando Kandak, and conventional U.S. infantry soldiers from 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division.

For the men of ODA 1333 and their detachment of around 100 U.S. soldiers and Afghan commandos, the orders sounded straightforward: help secure two Afghan helicopters downed by the Taliban near Ghazni. They knew they would have to take the long way around, because the Taliban had buried so many land mines along the direct road leading into Ghazni that it was impassable. What was usually a 60-mile trip westward from Paktia province would instead cover 160 miles of terrain. The troops loaded up their weapons and clambered aboard hulking RG-33 and M-ATV armored vehicles, which rumbled into the night toward Highway 1, an ancient 300-mile two-lane road that serves as the main artery linking the seat of government in Kabul to Kandahar.

The Taliban knew the Americans were coming and where they were coming from—there was only one way in. So the militants lay in wait, armed with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and AK-47s.

The soldiers of ODA 1333 would never reach the downed helicopters. Instead, they spent the next five days fighting hundreds of Taliban fighters in an endless series of running battles that debilitated vehicles and maimed members of their unit. “I’ve never seen that many [rocket-propelled grenades] in my career,” says the team’s sergeant, who, like others, spoke to TIME on the condition of anonymity.

In the face of recurring attacks, ODA 1333 and their attached units weren’t able to breach the city until some 17 hours later. The soldiers moved to a small makeshift outpost on Ghazni’s outskirts, where U.S. Special Forces teams had been based before the 2014 troop drawdown. Even there, they could find no refuge. Within 25 minutes of arriving, a mortar round arched over the perimeter and crashed through the back wall of a plywood structure where two Afghan soldiers were bedding down. The percussive thump of mortar fire shook the ground under the men, followed by the crack of gunfire over their heads, ODA 1333’s intelligence chief recalls. As the Americans and Afghans scrambled for protective cover, Apache helicopters wheeled low outside the base, hunting for the fighters responsible, blanketing the perimeter with gunfire and briefly quieting the attacks.

By that time, the sun was out and the fighting had died down enough to set up camp. When the Afghan troops were finally able to shed their combat gear, it was clear many of them had been toddlers when the war began in 2001. Some infantry soldiers still had baby faces, unlike the bearded, tattooed Special Forces team members. All were motivated to get back into the fight. The Taliban had not seized control of a provincial capital in Afghanistan since 2015. It wasn’t going to happen again on their watch.

On Aug. 12, ODA 1333 prepared to mount a counter­attack. U.S. Special Forces Team ODA 1212, which arrived overnight, would also push inside the city. The teams would be further aided by 60 additional Afghan commandos and aerial footage from MQ-9 Reaper drones. The goal was to secure the government facilities, police headquarters, prison and district center under attack. The operational plan was coordinated with Afghan forces, which had incurred more than 100 casualties from two straight days of fighting. As they left the outpost and headed into the city, team members could see decomposing corpses in front of burned-out buildings.

For those who lived in Ghazni, the scene was apocalyptic. Gunfire rattled through the air, rockets hissed and airstrikes crashed in the distance. Sami Ahmadi, a 24-year-old English student at Ghazni University, gathered his family and huddled inside his basement for shelter. “We were terrified,” he recalls. “Police were killed, their bodies lying in the road.”

As forces pushed farther into the city, waves of citizens emerged, carrying what they could in their arms to flee the fighting. They were migrating north on foot to seek safety in nearby towns, or even onto Kabul. Behind them, small teams of Taliban were laced through Ghazni’s narrow, serpentine streets.

The insurgents had stormed the prison on the southeastern edge of the city to free captured fighters, but that attempt was ultimately thwarted. Their effort to breach the provincial government building was quashed as well. But the Taliban put up a tough fight in the streets. At one point, as ODA 1333’s convoy inched forward, three Taliban emerged from an alleyway and fired a rocket that slammed into one vehicle’s machine-gunner turret, injuring the Air Force pararescue jumper manning the position. Bits of metal and debris flew into the vehicle. The air was thick and acrid. “There was so much smoke and dust,” says Tamim Ahmed, the team’s Afghan interpreter. “I couldn’t see straight for a couple minutes.”

The vehicle’s other gunner turned his weapon on the Taliban fighters, who were dumbfounded they didn’t kill everyone inside the truck. With a burst of fire, the gunner took out all three insurgents. But the pararescue jumper was severely wounded. A young soldier in another vehicle was also hit with shrapnel that would ultimately claim an eye. Neither man has been publicly named, but both later received Purple Heart awards, according to U.S. military officers in Afghanistan. (Despite their perilous mission, the U.S. military officially labels these soldiers as “advisers.”) When a rescue helicopter arrived to evacuate the wounded, a rocket came within 150 feet of hitting it.

It was clear from the nonstop attacks that U.S. forces would have to stay inside Ghazni Provincial Center, a local government headquarters building, to ensure it wouldn’t be overtaken. ODA 1212 split off from 1333 and established a headquarters there with Afghan forces. The soldiers stayed away from open windows and tried to remain hidden on the roof from snipers positioned just outside the facility’s fortified gates, waiting for a clean shot.

Over the following two days, the Taliban switched its focus to Ghazni’s less-defended surrounding areas. Afghan commando and Ktah Khas counter­terrorism teams went house to house, clearing neighborhoods of Taliban fighters. It was the audacity of the Taliban’s tactics in Ghazni that stuck out to U.S. soldiers. ODA 1333 and other teams had been attacked in Ghazni before, but typically in hit-and-runs—Taliban fighters would hang a mortar round or take a pot shot at their enemies, then melt in with the local population. During this siege of Ghazni, the insurgents walked the streets in broad daylight, firing on American armored vehicles, knowing U.S. warplanes were hunting them overhead. “From a military standpoint, it’s not very smart,” the Special Forces team sergeant says. “Because they attack and they usually die. But if they get off what they need to get off, I guess they feel like they win.”

The Taliban seemed to have a limitless supply of rockets, sometimes firing 20 or 30 at a time. One after another, U.S. vehicles were knocked out of the fight. When that happened, another unit would arrive to hook up a tow rope and drag the vehicle out of the kill zone, all while exposing themselves to enemy fire. The Taliban had all that firepower inside the city, and Afghan and U.S. forces had to deal with it.

But in addition to armor, advanced weaponry and superior training, the U.S. had another major advantage: air dominance. The military said it dropped 73 bombs and missiles in the Ghazni operation. By Aug. 15, a third Special Forces team and additional units had arrived in Ghazni. Thanks to the airstrikes, the Taliban began falling back. The U.S. military said 226 Taliban were killed during the operations.

Typically, both sides declared victory. Even as the fighting drove them from the city, the Taliban bragged that it had sent a clear message to President Donald Trump that “the conquest of this city signifies the failure of yet the latest American strategy,” according to a released statement. “The experience of Ghazni has proven that no defensive belts of cities can withstand the offensive prowess of the Mujahideen.” In truth, the strategic value of the Ghazni attack seems to have been the tweets, headlines and video footage that rippled across social-­media feeds, showing armed Taliban brazenly roaming free inside the city center. The message was clear: the Taliban remains a fierce enemy who can strike whenever they choose, regardless of peace talks and hopes of reconciliation.

From the U.S. and Afghan militaries’ view, the battle was a success. Afghan soldiers, though heavily reliant on American Special Forces and airpower to turn the tide, stood, fought and routed the enemy within five days. The Afghan commandos garnered respect for their performance. “They stepped up, no doubt,” says Noah Olson, a 20-year-old Army Specialist. “They want to get this over with as much as we do.” U.S. military brass declared the onslaught a misfire from a fading enemy. “Tactically, operationally and strategically, the Taliban achieved nothing with this failed attack except another eye-catching, but inconsequential headline,” said U.S. Army Lieut. Colonel Martin O’Donnell, spokesman for the U.S.-led international military coalition in Kabul.

Like most narratives emanating from Afghanistan, the truth lies somewhere in between. Looking at the damage inside Ghazni, it was hard for anyone to declare a true victory. Carcasses of burnt-out buildings smoldered in the sun. Stores that bristled with goods for the upcoming holiday became husks of blackened, twisted metal. “At a time like this, your neighbors are like brothers,” says Said Mohammed, 63, whose restaurant managed to emerge unscathed. “We grieve for them.”

The bloodshed was also apparent. At Ghazni Provincial Hospital, rooms were filled with patients of all ages who had suffered wounds in the onslaught. Dr. Abdul Basir Ramaki, the hospital’s medical director, said that the dead tallied 150, with 265 more injured, as of Aug. 16. “Many were women and children,” he says. “All Afghan people are tired of this violence.” (A U.N. report quoted “unverifiable numbers” that put the civilian death toll at more than 150.)

Guma Khan, an elderly man with a long white beard, lay on his back in a hospital bed, recovering from a bullet wound to his left leg. “I was just walking down the street,” he says. “How am I supposed to go on living here?”

Brigadier General Dadan Lawang, the commander of the Afghan National Army’s 203rd Corps, told TIME that 112 Afghan military and police were killed, and 56 were wounded. He said his team was reviewing its security posture to guard against future attacks. “We need to ensure this never happens again,” he says.

But the aftermath of the battle shows why that vow is unlikely to hold. On Aug. 17, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani arrived at the joint military headquarters in Ghazni Provincial Center. He blamed Pakistan for the Taliban attack, saying that many of the fighters were streaming back across Pakistan’s borders. ­Islamabad has long been blamed for giving the Afghan Taliban safe harbor, and Ghazni lies near tribal regions in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baloch­istan provinces.

Ghani claimed Pakistan’s military chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, had assured him over the phone that cross-border insurgent activity would not be allowed after the July 25 elections in Pakistan. “I need answers now,” Ghani said. “From where did they come from and why are they receiving treatment in your hospitals?” (Pakistan denied any involvement.)

The initial success of the Taliban assault was aided by the apparent lack of coordination between Afghan security forces. The local police were running low on supplies and ammunition and had difficulty communicating, according to Afghan officers. In addition, two American soldiers told TIME that they heard that the Afghan National Army had accidentally fired on their own units, as well as American convoys. When asked about the eyewitness accounts, the U.S. military command in Afghanistan said those reports remained unconfirmed. If true, the lack of readiness suggests Afghan forces may need “assists” from the U.S. Special Forces for some time to come.

When the fighting finally died down, the U.S. soldiers were looking forward to returning to their bases in the region, where they had running water, toilets and food that wasn’t prepared in a box. More than a week’s worth of combat made the prospect of returning to the amenities of a long-­established headquarters particularly appealing. Almost all the men had endured close calls and considered themselves fortunate to have made it out alive. “Our luck’s running out,” one soldier said, half-jokingly. “I still have five months here. My number’s going to be called eventually.”
A Taliban prisoner kills eight policemen after seizing their weapons. The condition of the Taliban gunman is unknown.