In a 2013 file photo, a security force platoon leader for Provincial Reconstruction Team Farah provides rooftop security during a key leader engagement in Farah City, Afghanistan. (Matthew Stroup/U.S. Navy)

KABUL, Afghanistan — International troops have been sent to help Afghan forces battling the Taliban in western Farah city, one of five provincial capitals the militants have been attempting to capture, NATO officials said Friday.

Under its train, advise and assist mandate, NATO’s Resolute Support had moved “an expeditionary advising package” made up of an undisclosed number of troops to the area to “provide advice and enablers if needed,” the mission said. Enablers can include air support and Special Forces troops.

Resolute Support emphasized it was not conducting combat operations in Farah.

Afghan forces have been battling the Taliban in the capital of Farah province for several days. A spokesman for the provincial governor, Mohammad Nasar Mehri, said Friday that it was still too early to tell whether the forces were in control of the situation.

“There is still fighting in some parts of the capital city,” Mehri said. “We’ve asked the government for more resources. Some have arrived.”

Farah was one of several provincial centers under attack from the insurgents.

Earlier this month, the Taliban managed to capture areas of Kunduz, the northern city they overran and briefly held last year.

On Monday, Taliban fighters entered the capital of southern Helmand province, Lashkar Gah, where they detonated a suicide bomb that killed at least 14 people, including 10 police officers.

The Taliban were quickly repelled from the city, but fighting continues on its outskirts, as it does in Kunduz.

According to The Associated Press, the recent fighting in and around Lashkar Gah — described as the worst in Helmand since the 2001 U.S. invasion that toppled the Taliban — has left hundreds of Afghan soldiers and police officers dead.

Pul-e-Khomri — the capital of northern Baghlan province — and Tarin Kot, the capital of Uruzgan province in the south also are under pressure from the militants.

Spokesman for U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, said the fact that Afghan forces, with some foreign support, have so far prevented the Taliban from overtaking Kunduz and Lashkar Gah this year is reason to be optimistic, and he expects similar outcomes in other vulnerable provincial capitals, including Farah.

“What we do believe and what we do think is that the ANDSF, specifically the 207 Corps [in Farah] … they have responded pretty well to these attacks,” Cleveland told reporters Wednesday. “So, we know that there is ongoing fighting, but we do believe that that 207 Corps out there has done a pretty good job of defending Farah city.”

Zubair Babakarkhail contributed to this report.

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