Afghanistan: Hemland province's major city in Taliban chokehold

Kabul: Lashkar Gah, the capital of Afghanistan’s embattled Helmand province, is under pressure from Taliban militants who have closed in on surrounding districts despite reinforcements sent from Kabul, local and government officials said Wednesday.

Two of the city’s previously stable districts - Nawa and Garmser - are now seeing heavy fighting, and Afghan forces are struggling to hold off insurgents who have gained ground in the last 10 days, despite supporting airstrikes by US and Afghan forces.

“Afghan and international air-forces are targeting Taliban positions as well as supplying our ground troops in the province,” said Dawlat Waziri, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defence.

Heavy fighting is raging in at least three districts - Nawa, Garmser and Nad-e Ali - according to civil society leader Sardar Mohammad Hamdard and Mirza Hussain Alizada, a provincial council member.

“We have fresh reinforcements fighting the Taliban in these districts,” Amar Zwak, the governor spokesman for Helmand said.

The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Tuesday reported “large displacement movements.”

“The complexity and scale of the attacks last week was much more significant, particularly in Helmand where two district centres were targeted and contested,” OCHA said.

Hamdard said 4,000 families were displaced in Helmand as food and household good prices doubled or tripled.

The main highway connecting the capital of the province to southern Kandahar, western Herat and Kabul has been closed off by Taliban fighters for several days.

A source from the country’s Ministry of Defence, meanwhile, reported that the chief of army staff and a deputy interior minister had travelled to Helmand to lead the fight against the Taliban.

Afghan security forces are stretched thin throughout the country, fighting growing insurgencies from both the Taliban and the Islamic State.