Afghanistan hails Pakistan’s help in restarting peace process — News Analysis

Taliban insurgents were present on the outskirts of the city, and were mostly holed up in the Chahar Dara district, a longtime stronghold, Jungulbagh said.

The Taliban offensives against Kunduz and Ghazni represent a sharp escalation in Taliban’s influence since they were toppled in 2001.

Since the withdrawal of worldwide troops from most combat operations at the end of a year ago, the brunt of fighting has been borne by Afghan forces.

Monday’s violence prompted most universities, schools and shops there, and followed days of sporadic fighting near Ghazni.

It was also a stark warning of how far the Taliban has extended its reach into regions once thought secure, stretching government forces and piling pressure on President Ashraf Ghani’s fragile national unity government.

“The Taliban planned to attack and seize the capital but we were on the alert and repelled them”, he said.

As fighting spreads in neighbouring provinces such as Badakhshan and Takhar, concerns are mounting that the city’s seizure was merely the opening gambit in a new, bolder strategy to tighten the insurgency’s grip across Afghanistan.

The union was reacting to threats issued on Monday against the Tolo and 1TV channels for their coverage of Taliban atrocities in Kunduz.

The statement said the move was in response to their recent reports claiming that Taliban fighters raped women at female hostel in Kunduz, after the group briefly captured the city on September 28.

In a separate incident, a C-208 Afghan army plane crashed as result of a technical problem in central Bamyan province, the Afghan Defense Ministry said in a statement Monday.

A military helicopter crashed Sunday at the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation base in the Afghan capital, Kabul, killing five coalition members and injuring five others, authorities said.

The crash came hours after a British military convoy was attacked in Kabul, in which three civilians were injured but no one was killed.

The medical charity shut down the trauma centre, branding the incident a “war crime” and demanding an worldwide investigation into the incident, which sparked an avalanche of global condemnation.

TWO British air force members killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan include a former Loughborough University student, it has been revealed.

BAGHDAD – The Iraqi military said Sunday that it had attacked a convoy in Iraq’s western Anbar province that included Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State militant group.