Pakistani army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif to visit Kabul on Sunday

The Taliban this week pronounced they had seized control of the district, but the claim was widely refuted by Afghan officials.

“A Taliban takeover of Helmand would be a huge blow to (U.S. and British) efforts and their egos”, said Orzala Ashraf Nemat, a Kabul-based academic.

In a separate incident in neighbouring Helmand province, where the Taliban has been increasing pressure for weeks, insurgents captured the district of Khanishin, a major control point for drug smuggling routes through the south. Fourteen policemen were killed and 11others wounded, provincial council chief Karim Atal said.

The UK Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday that British troops had been deployed to the province to support local forces after the Afghan Defence Minister called for a desperate worldwide support and air cover.

The Taliban already held three Helmand districts as well as large parts of the rest of the province outside the main centers and control key strategic roads, making it hard to reinforce and resupply security force units cut off by their advance.

“The situation is under control of the government forces”.

If the group were to take Sangin, it would be a significant gain for the militants.

“Taliban rumors that they have captured the district are not true”, he said. He told reporters the Afghan air force had conducted 160 combat and transport flights over Sangin in the past 48 hours.

It was strategically important because it linked Lashkar Gah, the Helmand capital, to districts in the north, he said.

David Sedney, a foreign policy analyst at the Wilson Center in Washington D.C, said that the Afghan army is showing its weakness. Adoctor at a local hospital, said 41people (37 civilians and 4 soldiers) had been killed. He said 12 members of the same family were killed by a roadside bomb as they were driving out of the district earlier this week, and rocket fire had landed on a house killing 17 people, including 10 children.

The Taliban on Thursday issued a statement laying out conditions for talks to end the war, now in its fourteenth year.

The interior ministry also said that security forces had killed a senior Taliban commander it identified as Mullah Nasir. It also led to deep fissures in the group’s leadership, creating confusion about just who the Afghan government should be talking to.

The Taliban statement listed barriers to peace negotiations, including United Nations sanctions on individual Taliban figures which were extended this week, and the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan, with specific mention of the British troops that arrived in Helmand on Wednesday to provide support for Afghan forces battling in Sangin.

Pakistan’s army chief General Raheel Sharif will visit Kabul on Sunday to hold talks with top Afghan civil and military leaders, the military said on Friday.