KABUL: The Taliban has launched a new large-scale attack on one of Afghanistan’s main cities, Kunduz. Similarly, it has taken hospital patients as hostages, the government said Saturday.
The militants, who have demanded that all foreign forces leave Afghanistan, now control or hold sway over roughly half of the country and are at their strongest since their 2001 defeat by a U.S.-led invasion. Such attacks are seen as strengthening their negotiating position.
Presidential spokesman Sediq Seddiqi said Afghan security forces were repelling the attack in parts of Kunduz, a strategic crossroads with easy access to much of northern Afghanistan as well as the capital, Kabul, about 200 miles (335 kilometers) away.
Seddiqi told reporters that the assault was “completely against the peace talks” and asserted that the militants were sheltering among civilians.
The Taliban were in control of the hospital in Kunduz and both sides in the fighting had casualties, provincial council member Ghulam Rabani Rabani told The Associated Press. He could not give an exact number.
The militants had taken hospital patients as hostages, defense ministry spokesman Rohullah Ahmadzai told reporters.
Ahmadzai asserted that 26 Taliban fighters had been killed in an airstrike but did not mention any casualties among civilians or Afghan security forces.
The Taliban launched the “massive attack” from several different points around the city overnight, said Sayed Sarwar Hussaini, spokesman for the provincial police chief.
(with inputs from Associated Press)
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