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Taliban launch coordinated assault on Afghan city of Kunduz Taliban assault on Kunduz sparks exit of UN and MSF staff
(about 4 hours later)
Taliban fighters have mounted a coordinated assault on the northern Afghan city of Kunduz overnight, attacking from four directions and entering urban areas, threatening a repeat of the operation in which they seized the city exactly a year ago. International agencies are evacuating foreign staff from Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan, following a heavy attack by Taliban forces who entered the city on Sunday.
Sheer Ali Kamawal, a police commander in Kunduz, said the attack began at around midnight local time, and fighting was still going on in and around the city. Some Taliban fighters had based themselves in residents’ houses. In a two-pronged assault, the militants have also stepped up their months-long offensive in Helmand in the south, seizing Nawa district on Sunday, according to officials, and inching closer than ever to the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah.
Military helicopters flew overhead and gunfire could be heard in Kunduz, where a year ago to the day Afghan troops backed by American airstrikes and special forces were fighting to drive out insurgents who had raised the Taliban flag in the city centre. Residents in Kunduz said the Taliban were occupying private homes. Many families were attempting to flee, but most roads leading out of the city were blocked. One resident, Asrala, said Taliban forces had entered his home to hide from security forces.
Mahfozullah Akbari, a police spokesman, said security forces were preparing to drive out the fighters, who had set up in the Khak Kani area in the south-west of the city. The Taliban attacked Kunduz from four different directions early on Sunday and had on Monday made it within 500 metres of the main square, according to residents. Their attack mimicked an assault in September 2015 when they managed to seize and hold the city for two weeks.
“The Taliban are inside some civilian houses and we have to carry out operations very carefully,” he said. The interior ministry said reinforcements were being sent to the city. “We are inside [the] governor’s building and we can’t go outside, there is fighting everywhere,” said an official from the provincial governor’s office. The governor, Asadullah Amarkheil, told reporters he would brief them on the situation once his family had been removed from the town.
The attack, which took place a day before the start of a donor conference in Brussels, underlines the precarious security situation in Afghanistan, where government forces are estimated to control no more than two-thirds of the country. In the early afternoon on Monday, Afghan special forces arrived from Kabul to conduct clearing operations. Afghan forces also carried out airstrikes, including in Sedarak, close to the main hospital.
The Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on his Twitter account: “A massive operation started on Kunduz capital from four directions early this morning.” When the city was last under Taliban control, a US airstrike hit a Médecins Sans Frontièrs hospital, killing 42 people and razing the clinic to the ground.
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. Following Sunday’s attack, MSF evacuated its foreign staff, who had been based in Kunduz to look after what was left of the destroyed hospital, said a spokesman for the charity. It also cancelled a commemoration ceremony on the hospital grounds, which had been expected to draw as many as 1,000 guests.
A Reuters reporter saw at least five Taliban fighters armed with AK-47 assault rifles, machines guns and rocket-propelled grenades in the city. He saw fighters entering houses and taking up position on rooftops. The UN also evacuated a majority of its foreign staff, airlifting them out in the afternoon.
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. Last year, as Taliban fighters advanced through Kunduz, government forces fled in droves, rendering the city defenceless. However, this time, according to western security sources, local intelligence became aware hours before the attack that Taliban had infiltrated the city, which helped them resist the assault. But residents were still concerned.
On Monday Taliban fighters took control of Nawa district to the south of the city, inflicting casualties and killing the local police chief, officials said. “Kunduz is about to fall,” sad Ghulam Rabbani Rabbani, a member of the provincial council. “Government forces are resisting but the Taliban are too many. Only international forces can defeat the attackers,” he said.
Heavy fighting continued along the main highway to Tarin Kot, the provincial capital of Uruzgan in the south, where a Taliban raid on 8 September sparked fears of another collapse like that in Kunduz last year. According to a spokesman for the US military, Brig Gen Charles Cleveland, foreign forces had not yet conducted airstrikes in Kunduz.
The fall of Kunduz was one of the most serious blows suffered by the western-backed government in Kabul since the withdrawal of international troops at the end of 2014. Also on Sunday, in the country’s south, officials said the Taliban captured Nawa district close to Lashkar Gah. The militants entered the district police chief’s compound with a bomb-laden Humvee, which then detonated. The police chief, Ahmad Shah Salim, and three police officers were killed, said Mohammad Karim Attal, the provincial council chief.
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 Afghanistan’s security forces. The provincial governor’s office, however, insisted that the district centre in Nawa was still in government hands. Cleveland said US forces had conducted six airstrikes in Helmand since 30 September.
At the two-day conference in Brussels starting on Tuesday, donors are expected to approve maintaining billions of dollars in funding for the government over the next four years. The Taliban’s offensive comes a day before the kick-off of a big conference in Brussels, where foreign donors will pledge aid to Afghanistan for the next four years.
The attacks raise concerns about leadership and coordination problems in the ranks of the Afghan security forces, their ability to repel the Taliban without assistance from Nato and US troops, and the approximately 17,000 Afghan special forces who shuttle between frontlines to shore up defences.
The attack is part of the Taliban’s stated goal of capturing a provincial capital before the end of the year. In addition to Helmand and Kunduz, the Taliban also recently came close to capturing Tarin Kot, the capital of Uruzgan.
Additional reporting by Rauf Mehrpoor in Lashkar Gah, Andrew Quilty in Kunduz and Ehsanullah Ehsan in Mazar-i Sharif