Afghan security forces are struggling in their attempt to wrest the major city of Kunduz back from Taliban militants.
The Afghan government lost control of Kunduz on Monday, the first time the Taliban have taken over a provincial capital since 2001.
The effort to retake the strategically important city began Tuesday, but it is being hindered by a shortage of ground troops, said Sayed Sarwar Hussaini, a spokesman for the police chief of Kunduz province.
Hundreds of reinforcements supposed to arrive in Kunduz on Tuesday are still stuck in neighboring Baghlan province where the Taliban have blocked the highway, he said Wednesday.
Airstrikes by the Afghan military and the U.S.-led coalition have killed more than 100 Taliban insurgents, including the group’s most senior commander in the province, Hussaini said.
But the bombardment from the sky hasn’t translated into clear gains on the ground.
Hussaini acknowledged that government forces had to pull back from the police chief’s compound in the city Tuesday evening after having retaken it earlier in the day.
He said Afghan security forces were in Kunduz airport and a number of other locations in the city Wednesday.
The Taliban said in an email that they had surrounded the Kunduz airport area and were advancing toward the airport itself.
The U.S.-led coalition ended its combat mission in Afghanistan last year, handing over the lead to Afghan forces while remaining in a training and advisory role.
“Obviously, this is a setback for the Afghan security forces,” Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said Tuesday. “But we’ve seen them respond in recent weeks and months to the challenges they face, and they’re doing the same thing in Kunduz right now.”
The fierce fighting in a major population center has caused a high number of civilian casualties.
A public health official in Kunduz reported that 16 people had been killed and more than 150 wounded, according to journalist Sune Engel Rasmussen in Kabul.
It’s unclear how many casualties the Afghan security forces have suffered in the city.
Acting defense minister Masoom Stanekzai said Tuesday afternoon that 17 Afghan troops had been killed and 18 more wounded in fighting across Afghanistan in the previous 24 hours. But he didn’t provide a toll specifically for Kunduz.
Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani accused the Taliban of using civilians as human shields.
“The Afghan government is a responsible government so it cannot carry out airstrikes on a city and on the houses of its people,” he said.
Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that initial reports suggest the Taliban were able to infiltrate, rather than fight their way into, the city.
The militants released hundreds of inmates from a prison in the city as they overran Afghan forces.