The remains of a bed frame in a room on the eastern wing of the Outpatient Department building.

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan — In the muted light of a hazy afternoon, the compound was silent. The graying walls of the outer gates, streaked with vertical mud stains, were largely undamaged, belying the devastation within. Torn foliage and broken branches were strewn about the grounds as if a storm had passed through the night before. After days of heavy fighting in Kunduz — and the resulting logistical obstacles — I had arrived at the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Kunduz Trauma Center, or what remained of it.

The streets surrounding the compound were deserted and all the wider for the lack of parked cars. Adjacent to the hospital, the gaudy, three-story office buildings with faux bronze colonnades and reflective pink windows had been shuttered, bearing marks where stray bullets had cut into their facades. There wasn’t a person in sight.

The quiet was unnerving. Gun battles between the Afghan National Army (ANA) and a small number of Taliban — that had held out since the government counteroffensive was launched 10 days earlier — a few hundred feet away, toward the periphery of Kunduz from the hospital, had gathered momentum through the morning and peaked early in the afternoon. Embedded with the ANA’s 2nd Brigade, I watched on consecutive days as Taliban fighters — invisible but for the pop of their firing rifles — were painstakingly corralled by the soldiers, from mazes of mud-brick homes and light industrial buildings on Kunduz’s outskirts, into the city where, if all went according to plan, other ANA units would encircle them from the north. But by 2 p.m. on Oct. 10, apart from sporadic bursts, the sounds of war had become more distant. By 3 p.m., there was at least a semblance of respite across the south of the city, with only the occasional report of a Kalashnikov. The lull provided a window of opportunity in which to enter the city and access the hospital. A local driver agreed to take me to the site and confirmed the 10-minute drive would now be safe.