News / Afghanistan

Taliban militants pushed back near Afghanistan's Kunduz

Saturday, 16 April 2016 1:14 PM [ Last Update: Saturday, 16 April 2016 1:24 PM ]

Afghan security personnel search a vehicle at a checkpoint in Kunduz, April 15, 2016. (AFP Photo)

Afghan security forces have driven back Taliban militants in areas near the northern city of Kunduz.

The Kunduz provincial government said Saturday that fighting was concentrated in the districts of Khanabad and Chardara and the villages of Charkh Ab and Talawka.

Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman General Dawlat Waziri said 40 Taliban militants had been killed and about 50 wounded in the clashes.

Saad Mukhtar, head of the public health department in Kunduz, said six dead people and 87 wounded, including children, have been taken to hospitals in Kunduz so far.

There were no details about any possible casualties among Afghan security forces.

Kunduz is Afghanistan’s fifth largest city. It fell briefly into the hands of Taliban militants last year prompting thousands of residents to flee the violence.

In October 2015, Kunduz witnessed a deadly US airstrike on a clinic of Doctors Without Borders. The strikes lasted for “more than an hour,” according the chief of the group, also known as the MSF, and led to the closure of the trauma hospital in the city, depriving tens of thousands of Afghans of health care.

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