Afghan forces were engaged in fierce fighting in the strategically important northern city of Kunduz late Monday after the Taliban launched a pre-dawn raid.
Shah Hussain Murtazawi, the deputy presidential spokesman, said Afghan security forces had recaptured the main square of Kunduz from the Taliban and special forces had arrived to help regain control of other areas in the city.
The NATO-led Resolute Support mission said on its Twitter account that the government was in control of Kunduz and US forces were providing support.
The Taliban briefly captured the city in September 2015, and the memories of that attack spurred huge numbers of people to flee, one aid worker said.
“A lot of people who fled Kunduz last year at this time when the Taliban had taken over the city returned to Kunduz. So the number of people trying to flee again today was huge,” Ehsanullah Sadiqi told CNN, speaking by phone from Kunduz.
He said city streets were almost completely deserted.
Threat downplayed
On Monday it was unclear which parts of the city the Taliban had seized.
Shukria Paiman Ahmadi, a member of parliament who represents the area told CNN, “The Taliban have overrun important parts of Kunduz city and taken control of the city center.” She was in the capital, Kabul, but had spoken to people in the city, she said.
A tweet from the NATO mission said there was “increased Taliban activity” in Kunduz.
Earlier in the day, both Afghan and US officials had downplayed the threat.
“This time, the Taliban won’t be able to capture any part of Kunduz,” said Mahfoz Akbari, spokesman for the police in Kunduz, told CNN by phone.
US Brigadier General Charles Cleveland characterized the current clashes in Kunduz as “ongoing sporadic fighting.”
“We are not observing evidence via our internal means to support the reports that Kunduz is under significant attack,” he wrote in an email to CNN.
Pre-dawn raid Monday
A Taliban spokesman and Afghan government officials gave similar descriptions of how militants launched a pre-dawn attack on the city from four different directions.
“Our Mujahideen are advancing rapidly inside Kunduz,” Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed in a statement to CNN.
Fatima Aziz, a member of the Afghan parliament from Kunduz, called the security situation Monday “very bad” and claimed that the Taliban had cut off all the roads leading out of Kunduz, trapping its civilian population inside the city.
“We are requesting the central government and NATO to take quick action to end this battle,” Aziz told CNN.
The Taliban claimed Monday to have the capital cities of two southern provinces, Helmand and Uruzgan, surrounded and “under severe military operations.”
Longest foreign conflict in US history
The US is approaching the 15th anniversary of its war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is the longest foreign conflict in US history.
The US military is reducing its footprint on the ground to roughly 8,500 troops from peaks of more than 100,000 servicemen and women just a few years ago.
But US forces have carried out more than 700 airstrikes in the first eight months of 2016 in large part to support Afghan troops on the ground.
Despite this air support, the Western-backed Afghan military is suffering some of its worst casualties yet.
“We believe that there has been a 20% increase in ANDSF [Afghan National Defense and Security Forces] casualties, so far this year compared to this time in 2015,” wrote Colonel Michael Lawhorn, Director of Public Affairs for US Forces Afghanistan, in an email to CNN.