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Taliban launches major assault on Afghan city of Kunduz Taliban launches major assault on Afghan city of Kunduz
(35 minutes later)
The Taliban has launched an assault on Kunduz in northern Afghanistan one year after briefly taking over the city in a lightning offensive, an AFP correspondent said, describing intense fighting. Taliban fighters have mounted a four-pronged assault on the northern city of Kunduz, a senior city police official said.
The attack began in the early hours at the southern and eastern approaches to the city where the Islamist militants were engaged in battles with government forces, he said. Sheer Ali Kamal, a police commander in Kunduz, said the attack began at around midnight (1930 GMT on Sunday) and fighting was still going on in and around the city.
Two Afghan army helicopters were flying over the city, which was deserted, with streets empty and shops closed. “We are putting all our efforts together to push them back,” he said.
The attack comes almost exactly a year since the Taliban overran the city, the only provincial capital to have fallen into their hands since they were ousted from power in 2001. Military helicopters were flying overhead and gunfire could be heard in the city, which was deserted with streets empty and shops closed.
Government control of the city has been shaky ever since. Kunduz, which fell briefly to the Taliban a year ago, has seen repeated bouts of heavy fighting as the insurgents have sought to repeat their success of 2015.
After seizing Kunduz on 28 September 2015, the Taliban held it for two days and eventually announced they were withdrawing from the outskirts on 15 October. Monday’s attack, a day before the start of a major donor conference in Brussels, underlines the precarious security situation in Afghanistan, where government forces are estimated to have control over no more than two thirds of the country.
The United Nations said that battle left 289 people dead and hundreds more wounded. “A massive operation started on Kunduz capital from four directions early this morning,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in his official Twitter account.
A US airstrike during the battle to dislodge the jihadists hit a hospital operated by aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres on October 3, killing 42 people including patients and medical staff. He said the Nawabad area with four checkpoints had been captured and a number of soldiers had been killed. It was not immediately possible to verify the claim.
A Reuters reporter saw at least five Taliban fighters armed with AK-47 assault rifles, machines guns and rocket-propelled grenades in the city.
The attack came as the Taliban have stepped up operations in different parts of Afghanistan, including the strategic southern province of Helmand, where they have been threatening the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah.
The fall of Kunduz last year was one of the most serious blows suffered by the western-backed government in Kabul since the withdrawal of most international troops at the end of 2014.
A US airstrike during the battle to dislodge the jihadists last year hit a hospital operated by aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres, killing 42 people including patients and medical staff.
Although the insurgents abandoned the city after a few days, the demonstration that they were able to take a provincial capital underlined their growing strength and exposed serious flaws in Afghan security forces.
A Taliban raid on Tarin Kot, the provincial capital of Uruzgan in the south, on 8 September also sparked fears of another collapse like that in Kunduz last year.
Mujahid said in the Taliban statement that the militants were pressing ahead with their assaults on Helmand and Uruzgan. Afghanistan’s international partners are due to start a two-day conference in Brussels on Tuesday, where they are expected to approve maintaining billions of dollars in funding for the government over the next four years.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.