However, according to reports, the fighting is still going on in parts of the city. That was the biggest victory the Taliban has had in 15 years. Bullets broke windows and pierced the roof of the intensive care unit, Dr. Masood Nasim said.
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As the fighting raged, civilians were stuck in the middle.
Afghan Special Forces earlier said they had recaptured the city from the militants.
“Officials and senior army officers are saying their troops are now in control of the city, after fighting their way back in overnight”.
The facility has a 92-bed capacity but the medical staff scrambled.
“The majority of patients had sustained gunshot wounds, and surgeons have been treating severe abdominal, limb and head injuries”, Doctors Without Borders said in a statement.
He is urging Kunduz inhabitants to “continue their normal life”.
In the meantime, U.S.-led coalition forces dispatched its ground troops and carried out air strikes on Taliban targets in Kunduz. Gunshots were heard near the airport, according to a resident who did not want to be named for security reasons.
Tuesday’s air raids by Afghan and USA forces on Taliban killed almost 160 militants including their chief in Kunduz.
Their incursion into Kunduz, barely nine months after the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation combat mission concluded, raised troubling questions about the capabilities of Afghan forces as they battle the militants largely on their own.
“Mujahidin still have control in Kunduz city”.
The city is an important regional hub for the trafficking of weapons and drugs, and its “fall poses a dire challenge to the assertion that the Afghan security forces can hold the country’s most vital cities”, observes the New York Times. The options all call for keeping a higher-than-planned troop presence based on his judgment of what it would take to sustain the Afghan army and minimize the chances of losing more ground gained over more than a decade of costly USA combat, they said.
The statement by Afghan officials released this morning said that a major operation overnight saw government forces recapturing government landmarks and inflicting heavy casualties on the militants.
The Afghan counteroffensive was supported by American and coalition special forces.
“After we got reinforcement and started a massive operation inside Kunduz city Taliban could not resist and escaped”, he said.
The spokesman for Afghanistan’s Public Health Ministry, Wahidullah Mayar, said on his official Twitter account that at least 30 people had been killed in the fighting, and more than 200 injured.
In a national televised press conference, President Ashraf Ghani praised the “bravery and valor of our security forces” in overwhelming the enemy “without suffering any casualties”. They left by truck, rickshaw or horse – and a few on foot.
The Taliban’s recent gains in Kunduz and neighbouring provinces highlight that a large and strategic patch of northern Afghanistan is imperilled by a rapidly expanding insurgency.
The man said shops are closed, there is a citywide power blackout, and it is becoming hard to find food.
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Jawed Ludin, the former deputy foreign minister of Afghanistan, told the BBC’s Today programme that Kunduz was known to be at risk from terror attacks and the government should have done “a better job” at protecting the city.
