Taliban Attack Kandahar Airport, Killing at Least Nine

Taliban militants on Tuesday night attacked buildings housing government employees and military bases at the airport, which is used by Afghan, US and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation military forces.

No casualty reports were immediately available as the clash is going on at the moment.

At least 46 people were killed when Taliban militants attacked an airfield in the southern city of Kandahar in an assault that began on Tuesday evening, according to Afghan officials.

“Eight people, including civilians and soldiers, have been killed”, Samim Khpalwak, a spokesman for the Kandahar provincial governor, told AFP.

Kandahar Air Field, a former hub for tens of thousands of troops and contractors, is located in southern Afghanistan’s largest city and the Taliban’s spiritual heartland.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid on Twitter claimed that “150 Afghan and foreign soldiers” had been killed in the fierce fighting.

“Several insurgents managed to breach the first gate of the complex”, he told AFP, as the battles raged.

One Afghan commander in Kandahar, Dawood Shah Wafadar, told the BBC the militants had also entered a house where they were holding a family hostage. The commanders spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. The claim could not be verified, and the Taliban often exaggerate battlefield victories.

In the video, a man called Abu Yasir Al-Afghani accuses the Taliban of working with neighboring Pakistan’s spy agency, the ISI, which Pakistan denies. It has both a military and a civilian section, as well as a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation base. A spokesman for NATO’s Resolute Support mission said there had been no reports of casualties among the hundreds of global personnel at the air base but he had no other details.

“Stuff like this is pretty bold, pretty ambitious”, the western official said about the Kandahar attack.

However, after the death of long-time leader Mullah Omar in 2013, which was revealed by the group in June, a power struggle within the group’s leadership seems to take place.

Mansour was declared Taliban leader on July 31, but splits immediately emerged in the group, with some top leaders refusing to pledge their allegiance to the new leader saying the process to select him was rushed and biased. It took two weeks of fighting and help from American special forces troops and coalition airpower for Afghan forces to fully regain control of the city. Later, an Afghan investigation concluded that weak leadership, misuse of resources and lack of coordination between services were the main reasons Kunduz fell to the Taliban.

“Unfortunately during the battle, 37 innocent Afghans were killed and 35 others injured”, it added, without specifying how many of them were civilians.