International efforts to help Afghan security forces regain control of territory taken by the Taliban are doing more harm than good, the former president of Afghanistan has warned. Hamid Karzai spoke to the Guardian after a bloody week in Helmand, as the Taliban captured large swaths of territory where hundreds of British and American soldiers died. As militants close in on the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, government forces have sustained heavy losses. Afghan commanders have pleaded with the US military to intensify airstrikes. But, Karzai said, they should not. “They are very wrong – they are terribly wrong,” he said. “Those who ask foreign forces to bomb Afghanistan are not representing the Afghan people or their interests.” The comments echo sentiments expressed by the ex-president during his 13-year tenure. Karzai vehemently opposed US airstrikes and night raids on Afghan villages, which he thinks undermined Afghan sovereignty, along with foreign “interference” in Afghan politics. “This denial of self-determination causes a lot of frustration and anger for the Afghan people, and that helps fuel conflict,” Karzai said. The US disagrees that its military is making things worse – as does the current Afghan government. Last month, Barack Obama announced his decision to leave 8,900 soldiers in the country until 2017, further delaying a long-planned drawdown. A recent report showed the amount of territory controlled by the Afghan government has fallen this year, dropping from 70.5% of the country’s districts in early 2016 to 65.6%. In the past week in Helmand, where 410 of the 455 killed British soldiers in Afghanistan died, Nad Ali district was almost entirely overrun, bringing the Taliban close to Lashkar Gah. The government is almost completely absent from northern districts such as Musa Qala, Sangin and Kajaki. But Karzai said those losses should be accepted as the consequence of Afghan forces fighting alone. “If we cannot fight it ourselves, then we cannot...

At least 12 people have been killed and 44 wounded after militants attacked the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, trapping students and foreign staff members in their classrooms amid explosions and automatic gunfire. Witnesses said the attackers blew up an outer wall before bursting into the university compound around 7pm on Wednesday. Seven students, three police and two security guards were killed, police said, while dozens of people were wounded by bullets or shrapnel or injured themselves while jumping from second-storey windows. About 700 students were rescued in the attack in which two suspected militants were killed by security forces. One student, Mohammed Khalid Feroz, said he was playing basketball at the university gym when he heard the first explosion and rushed to escape with other students. He returned to look for his friends only to find a professor bleeding profusely from his throat. “He was badly injured. I took him to a dorm,” said Feroz, who attempted to provide first aid. Ten minutes after the attack began, dozens of officers from the Afghan special police force (CRU) cordoned off the scene. The ministry of interior affairs spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said they were heading inside to look for the “terrorists”. Foreign troops were also involved in the operation to secure the university. A spokesman for the international forces in Kabul said the number of foreign troops was “small”. The troops were “not directly involved or in a combat role, but advising their Afghan counterparts”, Brig Gen Charles Cleveland said. Outside the university, a crying man, who declined to give his name, said his brother had called him from inside the university after suffering three gunshot wounds. “I don’t know where [in the university] he is,” the man said. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, which comes just weeks after two university professors – an American and an Australian – were kidnapped at gunpoint nearby. Their whereabouts...

Afghan forces have recaptured a district that had fallen briefly to the Taliban, officials and residents said on Sunday, after thousands of people fled their homes in Afghanistan’s northeastern Kunduz province. Khan Abad district, which is around 30 kilometres east of Kunduz city — the provincial capital where militants last year scored their biggest ever victory — had fallen to the Taliban after they launched a pre-dawn attack on the district centre on Saturday, according to local officials. Several hours later Afghan special forces were deployed to the area — a key route to Kunduz city — to retake the district. The district was recaptured by government forces on Saturday evening, according to Sayed Mahmood Danish, a Kunduz governor spokesman. “Taliban are now being chased away. The threat to the city is gone. We are expanding our operations beyond the district,” said Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi. A shopkeeper in Khan Abad district, Khalid, told AFP that people were still worried about the Taliban making a return to the city. “The roads are empty, few shops are open in the city. People do not have access to food and drinking water. We still cannot come out of our houses,” he said. Another resident, Mohammad Sahim, said the militants had looted and set fire to government buildings. “People are in fear, you don’t see many people in the streets, schools are closed,” he said, adding that there is a danger of food shortages. The Taliban briefly captured Kunduz city in September last year, the first city to fall to the insurgents in their biggest victory in 14 years of war. The militants were driven out almost two weeks later by Afghan forces backed by US aircraft and Nato soldiers, but it marked the first time since 2001 that the Taliban were able to take control of a major city in the country. After the brief Kunduz city takeover, US and Afghan officials insisted that they would not allow another urban centre to be captured. Earlier this month, the...