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According to several local sources, the Taliban surrounded the key city of Kunduz in northeastern Afghanistan on Monday.
The Taliban surrounded the key city of Kunduz in northeastern Afghanistan on Monday (June 21st), stepping up pressure on government forces forced to abandon several districts, according to local sources.
“The situation is worrying in Kunduz. Taliban fighters are at the gates of the city and they are confronting the army,” Amruddin Wali, a member of the provincial council, told AFP.
“This morning they took control of the Achin Bridge [au nord de la ville, NDLR] and block access to Kunduz “from the border with Tajikistan, to the north and on the main axis leading to Kabul, to the south,” Amruddin Wali continued.
“The Afghan forces have withdrawn. The Taliban have taken up a position on the main road and are only allowing civilians to pass,” he added.
“A week of intense fighting”
This information was confirmed to the AFP correspondent on the spot by a security source refusing to be named.
According to this source, the Afghan security forces lost three districts from which they withdrew “after a week of intense fighting”.
“If the Afghan forces do not receive air support, it will be a disaster,” warns the official.
According to their spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid, contacted by AFP, the insurgents “are carrying out operations around Kunduz but have not launched an offensive against the city”. Kunduz fell into the hands of the insurgents twice, in 2015 and 2016, before being recaptured.
Kunduz police spokesman Inamuddin Rahmani told local media “50 Taliban killed and 30 wounded in past 24 hours.” But according to him, “the security forces are at their post.”
The Taliban have been stepping up their offensives on the ground since the start of the withdrawal of American forces in early May, scheduled to end no later than September 11.
The Afghan army is under assault from all sides, especially in the northern provinces, Kunduz, Baghlan, Badakhshan, Faryab, Maimana, and is losing ground at an alarming rate.
It has recently suffered heavy casualties, including among its elite forces which last week recorded at least 20 deaths in Faryab, or was forced to abandon besieged outposts in remote areas.
Under the terms of the agreement signed with the insurgents in February 2020 in Doha, the Americans, who are in the process of withdrawing from Afghanistan, will only resort to air force if the insurgents threaten major cities.
The Taliban are now present in almost all Afghan provinces and surround several major cities, as they did in the 1990s to seize almost the entire country and install an authoritarian Islamic regime, driven out by the American intervention in 2001.
The south is already largely under Taliban control with the exception of the big cities.
A Taliban official reaffirmed Sunday the will to establish “a genuine Islamic regime through negotiation”, but the inter-Afghan talks started last September in Doha with the government have stalled.
With AFP