Naveed, a 23-year-old student who gave only his first name, said he and his family had locked themselves indoors for the first three days of the Taliban’s occupation at the end of last month, before escaping in their auto.
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The Taliban, seeking to re-establish their hard-line Islamist regime after it was toppled by US-led military intervention in 2001, said their decision to move out of Kunduz was not a sign of defeat.
“The (Taliban) ordered its mujahideen to withdraw from the main square, markets and government buildings to the outlying rural areas…in order to reinforce their defense lines and reserve their strength for effective future operations”, it said.
“Only a small number of people who did not have a place to stay outside the city have returned to their homes”, he added.
The announcement comes days after the government claimed to have recaptured the city, where insurgents burned down government buildings, gunned down opponents and freed hundreds of prisoners.
As fighting spreads in neighbouring provinces such as Badakhshan and Takhar, concerns are mounting that the city’s seizure was merely the opening gambit in a new, bolder strategy to tighten the insurgency’s grip across Afghanistan.
And last week the militants attempted to overrun Maimana, the capital of northern Faryab province.
However, the Taliban assure that they are able to seize the city again if they want.
They also stand accused of human rights violations, including mass murder and rape, according to Amnesty worldwide.
Fighters “seized military equipment, APCs, launchers, tons of heavy and light arms ammunition as well as archived documents from the ministry of national directorate services and other organs” and proved they could achieve their objectives in “every part of the country” despite the continued presence of foreign forces, the statement said.
Taliban insurgents were present at the outskirts of the city, and were mostly holed up in Chahar Dara district, a longtime stronghold nearby.
In the process, the Taliban also delivered a shock to hopes that the Afghan security forces could dependably defend the country’s most important cities.
NPR’s Tom Bowman tells our Newscast Unit, Kunduz was the first major provincial capital to fall under Taliban control in 14 years.
Final casualty figures from the fighting in Kunduz were 57 killed and 630 wounded, including civilians, according to Saad Mukhtar, director of public health in Kunduz.
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces are under pressure after a U.S. air strike on October 3 pummelled a hospital in Kunduz run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF), killing at least 12 staff and 10 patients.
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The worldwide law constitutes treating journalists and other civilians as military targets a war crime.
