GHAZNI, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Heavily armed Taliban fighters attacked the strategic central Afghan city of Ghazni on Friday, burning police checkpoints and seizing control of parts of the center before being driven back by U.S.-backed forces, officials said. Interior Ministry spokesman Najib Danish said at least 25 security forces have been killed and wounded since the assault began early Friday, and that a local reporter was killed. Rezaye said additional reinforcements had been rushed to Ghazni late yesterday, after US forces deployed attack helicopters and launched at least one drone strike to push back the Taliban fighters. Lt. Col. Martin O’Donnell, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said that the insurgents had attacked “multiple government centers” in Ghazni, a populous city about 100 miles south of Kabul on a major national highway, but that they were driven back. In Ghazni, the attack began around 2 a.m. with intense gunbattles raging and fires burning in several shops in the city's residential areas, provincial police chief Farid Ahmad Mashal told The Associated Press. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a social media post that the group had captured Ghazni’s main prison and freed many inmates, but Afghan officials could not immediately confirm or reject the statement.
A large-scale military offensive is launched by the Taliban in a bid to overrun the southeastern city of Ghazni, a provincial capital on the Kabul–Kandahar Highway. They manage to take control of a part of the city.