At least 10 Taliban fighters were killed and five others wounded in a major attack on the group’s ministry of interior in Kabul on Saturday as tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan escalated.
The attack, which took place at the ministry headquarters on the airport road in Kabul, has been claimed by the National Resistance Front (NRF) of Afghanistan. It said a Taliban commander was also killed in the attack.
Officials from the Taliban confirmed the attack on the significant building in the country but said that four people were wounded in the incident. Khalid Zadran, a Taliban spokesperson, said the injured had been taken to a hospital and an investigation has been launched into the attack.
The NRF, led by Ahmad Massoud, said the attack targeted a security convoy of the Taliban’s ministry. It said three military vehicles were destroyed.
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The attack comes just days after the Taliban’s acting minister of refugees and repatriation, Khalil Haqqani, was killed in a suicide bombing in Kabul. The senior member of the powerful Haqqani network, and uncle of the Taliban’s interior minister and senior leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, was killed in a major attack inside the ministry.
Officials of the resistance group said they are leaking security breaches inside the Taliban group.
“Saturday’s attack was to demonstrate our capabilities against some of the Taliban’s well-guarded locations, and this is not the only complex attack against the Taliban we’ve carried out. This year we’ve carried out more than 360 military operations against them in 20 provinces of Afghanistan,” said Ali Maisam Nazary, the NRF’s head of foreign relations.
“The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, denied any resistance against the Taliban. We are trying to prove them wrong by showing security breaches inside Taliban-held Afghanistan. We’ve not only infiltrated the group but also shown our capabilities,” he told The Independent.
The Afghan Taliban and Pakistan clashed at “several points” at the border, officials said, days after Pakistani aircraft carried out aerial bombing inside Afghanistan.
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The airstrikes on eastern Afghanistan killed 46 people, mostly women and children, a Taliban government official had confirmed.
Afghan authorities warned on Wednesday they would retaliate after the Pakistani bombardment, which they said had killed civilians. Islamabad said it had targeted hideouts of Islamist militants along the border.
The Taliban on Saturday said the strikes were conducted “beyond the hypothetical line” – an expression used by Afghan authorities to refer to a border with Pakistan that they have long disputed, but did not mention Pakistan.
Both countries have a strained relationship, with Pakistan saying several militant attacks that have occurred in its country have been launched from Afghan soil – a charge the Afghan Taliban denies.
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