The terrorists claim to have captured nearly the entire district of Sangin after storming its frontlines on Sunday, tightening their grip on the southern Helmand province.
Fleeing residents reported Taliban executions of captured soldiers as the insurgents advanced on the district center, compounding fears that the entire province was on the brink of falling into insurgent hands.
The US army conducted air strikes on Wednesday to back up Afghan forces mobilizing reinforcements to relieve dozens of security forces holed up in the district center.
“US forces conducted two strikes in Sangin,” a NATO spokesman said in a brief statement.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said insurgents had overrun the whole of Sangin, pinning down Afghan forces in a military base where trapped soldiers reported dire conditions.
“Our men are hungry and thirsty,” Abdul Wahab, a local police commander in Sangin, told AFP.
“Stepping out to get bread means inviting death,” he said, adding that dozens of his comrades had been killed and critically wounded.
The war in Helmand, seen as the epicenter of the expanding insurgency, follows a string of military victories for the Taliban after NATO formally ended its combat operations last year.
All but two of Helmand’s 14 districts are effectively controlled or heavily contested by the Taliban, who also recently came close to overrunning the provincial capital Lashkar Gah.
The turmoil in Helmand, the deadliest province for British and US forces in Afghanistan over the past decade, underscores a rapidly unravelling security situation in Afghanistan.
Britain on Tuesday said a small contingent of its troops had arrived in Camp Shorabak, the largest British base in Afghanistan, before it was handed over to Afghan forces last year.
The deployment, in addition to a recent arrival of US Special Forces in the region, is the first since British troops ended their combat mission in Helmand in October 2014.
The contingent, which an Afghan official said includes around 90 people, is on an “advisory” mission with London insisting they will not engage in combat; AFP reported.
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