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| Afghanistan |
| Fighting across Afghanistan as Taliban opens offensive before talks |
| 2019-04-14 |
| [ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... forces attacked the northern Afghan city of Kunduz on Saturday, a day after the launch of their annual spring offensive, as fighting intensified across the country ahead of the next round of peace talks with US representatives. Heavy fighting ... as opposed to the more usual name-calling or slapsy... has been going on for weeks but the announcement of the spring offensive while peace talks were due was a blow to any hopes of a quick agreement and was criticized as "reckless" by US special peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad. Taliban front man Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement the movement was committed to the grinding of the peace processor but accused Afghan and international forces of stepping up their own operations. "We are committed to the ongoing process of negotiation and peaceful resolution, but we cannot be unmoved in the face of military operations and the terrorist wave of occupiers and mercenaries," Khalilzad said. However, death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate... security officials in Kabul said that apart from the operation in Kunduz, Saturday’s attacks in 15 provinces across the country were limited in scope and had largely been contained. "They engaged Afghan cops to show their presence with the start of their spring offensive," one bigwig said. "But Afghan forces were on high alert across the country and therefore several attacks were pushed back." STRATEGIC CITY In Kunduz, the strategic city which briefly fell to the Taliban in 2015, fighters attacked from several directions in the early hours of the morning, causing heavy casualties, the provincial governor’s front man Enhamuddin Rahmani said. A local health official said more than 70 dead and maimed had been brought into the main city hospital. There were also attacks in the northern provinces of Baghlan, Takhar, and Badakhshan, as well as Faryab, Sar-e Pul and Balkh, but there were no reports of significant casualties among security forces. In southern Afghanistan, Taliban forces launched attacks in the opium-rich province of Helmand ...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan... , with operations in Nad Ali, Gereshk and Sangin districts, areas that have been fought over for the past 17 years. |
| Posted by:Fred |