Nine Afghan forces killed in Taliban attacks: Officials
Taliban militants have attacked two police checkpoints in the restive province of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan, killing at least nine Afghan security personnel, local officials say.
Kunduz Governor Abdul Sattar Mirzakwal told AFP on Friday that the Taliban launched the attacks against the checkpoints simultaneously overnight.
Kunduz has seen regular clashes between the militants and government forces. The province has briefly fallen to the militants twice in recent years.
Kunduz provincial council member Khaluddin Hakimi put the death toll from the latest attacks at 10, adding that 10 security personnel had also been injured.
The attacks come even as the Afghan government and the Taliban militant group have been holding direct talks to end fighting since September last year.
The two sides reached a preliminary deal last month that sets out rules for further talks, the first written agreement between them since the US-led invasion of 2001.
Earlier this week, sources from the government negotiating team said the intra-Afghan peace negotiations, which are being held in Doha, Qatar’s capital, had had no progress recently and the two sides had not yet agreed on a unified agenda for further talks.
The US reached a deal of its own with the Taliban in February last year on the withdrawal of the remaining 12,000 US troops from Afghanistan in exchange for the Taliban’s halting of their attacks on international forces.
The deal was intended to result in the reduction of bloodshed, but violence continues to take a heavy toll in the country.
Only in December last year, some 60 people were killed and many others were wounded in targeted attacks across Afghanistan, official figures show.
A report also said last year that Taliban bombings and other assaults had increased by 70 percent after the US-Taliban agreement.
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