At least 37 civilians have been killed and 18 others wounded in a 20-hour siege by Taliban militants against a residential complex near the airport in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, sources said on Wednesday.
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Also Wednesday, the Taliban seized a district in another southern province, Helmand, killing 14 Afghan security forces in a battle there.
For a few hours, the Taliban was in control of the airport compound as they held civilian causalities.
“The fighting started around 06:00 and intensified over the night”, 30-year-old university student Izatullah, who lives inside the complex, told AFP.
“Soldiers were calling on Taliban attackers to let women and children go but attackers declined”.
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Another nine Taliban fighters are dead and one wounded, while another continues to battle with security forces at the scene, officials said.
While the Afghan Defense Ministry reported that 37 people had died and 35 others were injured, local officials put the number of fatalities at less than a dozen, notes the Times. The sprawling airport in Kandahar city, known as Kandahar Air Field has both a military and a civilian section, as well as a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation base.
As the details of what unfolded in Kandahar solidify the key question will be how the attackers breached the airport’s security – why were they not stopped at the gate?
The attackers, disguised in army uniform, fired several rocket propelled grenades towards the airport vicinity.
The toll could rise to 36 people killed including the bombers, a Western official in Afghanistan said. But the militants have often made exaggerated casualty claims in the past.
The incident comes on the eve of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s visit to Pakistan for a regional conference where they are expected to discuss peace talks with the Taliban.
The leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan jointly opened the conference, with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif saying Islamabad wanted to revive peace talks between Afghanistan and the Taliban that have been stalled since the summer.
“It has become a familiar pattern”.
Last month, a breakaway faction of the Taliban elected its own leader, Mullah Mohammed Rasool Akhund, sparking speculation over the unity of the group.
In an audio message released last week, purportedly by Omar’s successor, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, Mansoor said the Taliban “won’t agree to have peace talks if our demands are not met” – including the implementation of Islamic law in Afghanistan.
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The Islamists’ denials have fallen on sceptical ears, however, especially after they kept Mullah Omar’s death secret for two years.
