KABUL: Taliban fighters have won the government’s main buildings in Kunduz City in Northeast Afghanistan, leaving government forces depending on airport control and their own base, said a provincial parliamentary member on Sunday.
The Taliban attack has gathered momentum in the past few days, when the rebels released their troops in Afghanistan after the United States announced it would end its military mission in the country at the end of August.
On Friday the rebels arrested their first provincial capital in the years when they controlled Zaranj, on the border with Iran in the South Nimroz Province of Afghanistan.
And on Saturday Deputy Governor of North Province Jowzan said the outskirts of the capital of Sheberghan Province were being attacked from the rebels.
A spokesman for Afghan security forces said “very (heavy) battle will occur” in Kunduz, because the security forces struggled to defend the city, considered a strategic prize while lying at the gateway to the northern provinces rich in minerals and Central Asia.
But a member of the Provincial Parliament in Kunduz told Reuters the rebels had taken the main buildings in the city of 270,000 people, raising fears that it could be the latest to fall into the Taliban.
“The heavy clash began yesterday afternoon, all government headquarters controlled the Taliban, only military base and airport with Andsf (Afghan security forces) from where they reject the Taliban,” Amruddin Guardian, member of the Kunduz Provincial Assembly, said.
Rohullah Ahmadzai, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, said on Facebook that special forces were in Kunduz and had carried out ‘permit operations’ in the city to take back the media office arrested by the Taliban.
Health officials in Kunduz said that 14 bodies, including women and children, and more than 30 people who were injured had been taken to the hospital.