KABUL — Taliban militants fought for a second day on Sunday in the southern city of Kandahar, targeting government and military compounds from commercial buildings.
It was the strongest offensive by the militants since U.S. special forces killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, last week.
The assault on the heavily protected city was believed to be a consequence of a jailbreak there last month, when 500 prisoners escaped through a tunnel from a high-security prison. Most of the escapees were Taliban fighters, and some were commanders.
Four insurgents who were arrested in the fighting on Saturday had fled the jail, said Zemarai Bashari, a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry in Kabul.
In Kandahar, residents said they were afraid.
“The situation is very bad. There is fighting going on in the city. Those who escaped the jail last month have attacked the city,” said Nematullah Akbari. “My son has not been to school in the last two days.”
Four people, three of them military personnel and one a civilian, have been killed, and about 40 have been injured, said Toryalai Weesa, the provincial governor.
Weesa said the fighting continued at a hotel where the insurgents were firing on the intelligence department.
Eleven of the militants were killed, seven of them detonated explosives and some were still hiding in the hotel, he said.
The provincial health director, Qayeum Pakhla, said in a telephone interview from Kandahar that six people had been killed — four of them on Saturday and two on Sunday — and that more than 50 were injured.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi said the militants killed 113 Afghan troops and three NATO soldiers since the attacks began on Saturday.
