“We can not confirm number of casualties at the moment”.
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Taliban insurgents have fought their way into the centre of a regional capital in Afghanistan in the worst breach of a major city in almost 14 years of war.
The attack on the northern city came as President Ashraf Ghani completed a year in office.
The Taliban have a history of brutality toward those they regard as apostates, and have banned girls from school as well as music, movies and other trappings of modern life in areas under their control.
Shops were closed, and the streets were empty, locals said.
“Our fighters are now advancing towards the airport”, Mujahid said on Twitter.
Most of the Taliban fighters appear to be Afghan Pashtuns and Uzbeks, rather than foreigners, he added.
In a separate statement addressed to nongovernmental organizations and private businesses, the Taliban said they should continue to operate normally-and provided a hotline for complaints.
“The airport is the only place that has not fallen to the Taliban”, he said.
Reinforcements are being sent to the northern provincial capital in a bid to prevent the city falling completely into Taliban hands.
In the past 24 hours, 17 Afghan security forces have been killed and another 18 troops were wounded in fighting, acting defense minister Masoom Stanekzai said Tuesday afternoon. They are not in a specific place.
Former Kunduz member of Parliament, Moein Marastial, says people are scared. Although they have succeeded in overrunning a handful during this year’s fighting season, they have been regularly expelled within days in counterattacks by government reinforcements. “Security forces in Kunduz were prepared for an attack, yet not one of this size, and not one in that was coordinated in 10 different locations at the same time”, Sediqqi stated. The Taliban issued a statement in victory, saying that the group had “no intention of” looting or carrying out extrajudicial killings.
In Kabul, the National Security Council was to meet later Tuesday over the fall of Kunduz, a government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss government plans.
Kunduz was swarming with Taliban fighters racing stolen police vehicles, who officials said overran the governor’s compound and the police headquarters. “Even the way out isn’t safe, there’s many Taliban checkpoints”.
The al-Qaeda-linked Jundullah Front had taken part in the assault, he said.
Kunduz is linked by highways to Kabul in the south, with Mazar-e-Sharif in the west and with Tajikistan in the north. They told us that we were free and could go home.
The Islamist group has been largely absent from cities since being driven from power by the United States and its allies, but has maintained often-brutal rule over swathes of the countryside. There is a lot of firing going around.
3) Professionals and laborers should return to work without fear of insecurity. Stanekzai’s toll was countrywide, not just in Kunduz, he said.
An Afghan aid worker described hearing gunfire within 50 metres: “We are hiding in the bathroom”.
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“The problem wasn’t lack of security forces”, Zalmai Farooqi, a district government from the Kunduz province, told the New York Times, adding that there might have been approximately 7,000 government troops in the area when the attack began.
