MORE than 100 Afghan soldiers were killed or wounded in a Taliban attack on an army base on Friday.
Fighting lasted for several hours near the city of Mazar-e Sharif in northern Balkh province, the defence ministry confirmed.
Insurgents targeted those leaving Friday prayers at the base's mosque and others in a canteen.
The Taliban said in a statement they had carried out the attack, using suicide bombers to breach defences.
Earlier estimates put the death toll as high as 134, but a statement from the defence ministry on Saturday gave the figure of more than 100 killed or injured.
It is one of the deadliest tolls in a Taliban attack on the Afghan army. At least 10 of the Taliban were also killed in the fighting and one attacker was detained.
The Afghan government has declared today a day of national mourning.
The Taliban fighters who attacked the base wore army uniforms and drove through checkpoints to launch the raid, a military spokesman said.
One injured soldier, Mohammad Hussain, said: "When I came out of the mosque, three people with army uniforms and an army vehicle started shooting at us. Of course, they had some infiltrators inside the base, otherwise they would never have been able to enter.
"One of them sitting inside a vehicle had set up a machine gun at the car's window and shot everyone in his way."
President Ashraf Ghani flew to the area on Saturday and visited wounded troops.
US military spokesman John Thomas described the attack as a "significant" strike, but he praised Afghan commandos for bringing the "atrocity to an end".
Separately, the US military command in Afghanistan said that Taliban commander Quari Tayib had been killed in a coalition air strike.
It said that Tayib was "once known as the shadow Taliban governor of Takhar province" in the north-east, and was killed along with eight other Taliban fighters in the strike on April 17.
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