United Kingdom deploys additional forces to help Afghan forces regain Sangin

Afghan military enforcements have been rushed to a besieged southern district threatened for days with takeover by Taliban fighters, the government says.

The militants were also reported to have overrun the district governor’s compound.

U.S. President Barack Obama has halted the withdrawal of most of the remaining 9,800 America troops in the country (which was scheduled for the end of this year), and Britain has ordered 10 of the 450 troops it still has in Afghanistan back to Sangin.

US Army Colonel Michael Lawhorn, a spokesman for Nato’s Resolute Support mission, said its priorities were to “train, advise, assist”.

On Wednesday, a spokesman said insurgents had captured the district of Gulistan in Farah, a remote western province that, like Helmand, is a major centre of opium cultivation.

“The military is in position and the operation is ongoing”, Stanekzai told a news conference in Kabul, adding that reinforcements had arrived in the province to relieve troops in Sangin.

Afghan officials and tribal elders confirmed to ABC News that while fighting continues, key buildings have been reclaimed by Afghan forces.

“I am confident that we will not lose Sangin”, said Rasoolyar, just days after he warned that Helmand was teetering on the brink.

Earlier on Thursday, Afghanistan’s government sent reinforcements to help besieged forces as Taliban claim to have taken control of nearly all of Sangin district.

A small contingent of British troops has been sent to Helmand “in an advisory role”, the British government said on Tuesday.

Helmand-based civil society activist Sardar Mohammad Hamdard said that at least 200 civilians had been killed or wounded in Sangin in the recent fighting.

The Afghan interior ministry said among the dead was Mullah Nasir, personally linked to Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour.

The six died when a suicide bomber drove his explosives-laden motorcycle into a joint NATO-Afghan patrol near Bagram Air Field on Monday.

Captain Beattie, who was awarded the Military Cross for his bravery in Afghanistan, said unless Britain stepped in and helped the Afghans then the country would be a “failure”.

Political analyst Waheed Muzhda, formerly an official in the Taliban’s 1996-2001 administration, said the Taliban needed to sort out its leadership problems before it started talking about the peace process.

Supply lines were cut, preventing ammunition and food from reaching government forces, and mines were placed near roads around the district center, officials have said.

The intervention has fuelled the perception that foreign forces are increasingly being drawn back into the conflict as Nato-trained Afghan forces struggle to rein in the insurgency. British troops in Sangin suffered more than 100 of their 456 fatalities during the U.K.’s 13-year Afghanistan combat mission.