Afghan forces in bid to retake key city

“The residents of Kunduz should be assured of their security; they should not be concerned”, the Taliban’s new leader, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, said in a statement.

Its victory, a day before Afghan President Ashraf Ghani marks a year in office, is likely to put pressure on the government to do more to combat the extremists. He urged his nation to trust Afghan troops and not give in to “fear and terror”.

Taliban militants also freed hundreds of prisoners from the city’s main jail, the BBC reported.

Deputy Interior Minister Ayoub Salangi said that security forces were ready to retake the city and vowed to investigate how the Taliban managed to seize a major urban centre for the first time in 14 years. While Hussaini said 500 prisoners were freed, Rahmatullah Nabil, head of the National Directorate of Security, said the total was closer to 600. The number of dead and wounded in the fighting was unclear. Among them, nine had died, said Kate Stegeman, a MSF field communications manager. In addition, Médecins Sans Frontières said their hospital in Kunduz had admitted more than 100 casualties, and was operating on full capacity.

According to local officials from Takhar province, Taliban militants launched a massive attack on Eshkamish district late Monday afternoon. Residents reached over the phone by The Associated Press said sporadic gunfire could still be heard around the city on Tuesday morning. “The fighting is particularly fierce in the southeastern area of the city”, a Western NGO official told AFP news agency on condition of anonymity. Their rule was marked by brutality, with so-called apostates subject to arbitrary justice.

On Monday, the militants overran the city after entering the province from three directions. It has a majority Pashtun population and had been a Taliban stronghold before the USA invasion in 2001.

“US forces conducted an air strike in Kunduz today to eliminate a threat to coalition and Afghan forces operating in the vicinity of Kunduz”, Colonel Brian Tribus said. But neither USA nor North Atlantic Treaty Organisation troops are believed to have an operational presence in the region.

A Taliban fighter sits on his motorcycle adorned with a Taliban flag in a street in Kunduz on Tuesday.

It added that government forces had regained the city prison and the provincial police headquarters, which were overrun on Monday night.

Insurgents also showed off seized tanks and armoured cars, chanting “Allahu Akbar” (God is the greatest) and promising to enforce Islamic sharia law, a Taliban video showed.

MSF and the global Red Cross said they had evacuated a few of their worldwide staff from Kunduz.