Taliban overrun military base in Baghlan, kill dozens of soldiers

Taliban insurgents destroyed an army base in northern Afghanistan on Sunday, rampaging through the area, attacking smaller outposts and killing dozens of soldiers and police, local officials said.
The military installation was the second major base to fall to the insurgents in Baghlan Province in the past month, and the third in northern Afghanistan during the same period.
Abdul Hai Nemati, the governor of Baghlan Province, said the Afghan National Army base at Mangalha village, in the Baghlan-e-Markazi District just north of the provincial capital of Pul-i-Kumri, had been completely surrounded by insurgents.
Casualties for Afghan security forces have steadily risen in recent years, as the international coalition has mostly withdrawn and left most of the fighting to the Afghans. In the first 10 months of 2016, the number of Afghan police and soldiers who have died totaled 6,785, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, a United States government agency. Since then, the agency said, the American military has classified casualty information as secret at the request of the Afghan government.
Although officials said reinforcements had been sent to the Mangalha base after the siege began on Friday night, a senior police official said that the insurgents had captured it by Sunday and had killed 40 soldiers, national and local police officers in that base and at smaller outposts in the area.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. Afghan officials have often responded with denial in response to initial reports of serious setbacks.
An official at the Ministry of Defense in Kabul, Ghafoor Ahmad Jawed, claimed that local officials’ description of the military facility as a base was inaccurate.
Mr. Jawed said it was a “check post” that included representatives of the Afghan National Army and other units. Mr. Jawed also denied that the Taliban had captured it, saying it had been abandoned by defenders. “We don’t know the number of A.N.A. forces in the check post and the number of casualties yet,” Mr. Jawed said.
Mr. Nemati said he did not know how many people had been killed in the fighting, but Mohammad Safdar Mohseni, head of the Baghlan provincial council, said that even before the main base fell, the death toll on Saturday included 16 army soldiers, four police special forces officers and two local police officers.
Mangalha village was formerly a Taliban stronghold and the insurgents had surrounded the military base last year, only to have the government reclaim control of the area.
The insurgents destroyed another Afghan military base and a nearby police post in Baghlan Province on Aug. 15, killing 39 soldiers and policemen, according to local officials. That base was also in Baghlan-e-Markazi District, in neighboring Alawuddin village.