KABUL: Clashes between Taliban fighters and Afghan forces intensified in northern Balkh and southern Logar province as warring sides fought to control checkpoints and the number of coronavirus cases in Afghanistan rises, officials said on Friday.
In recent weeks, the Taliban has attacked several provinces, ignoring a pledge to reduce violence as part of a peace deal signed with the US government on Feb. 29.
The fighting also defies an appeal from international aid agencies for a cease-fire on humanitarian grounds to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.
At least 14 members of the Afghan forces were killed and more than 20 injured during the Taliban’s attack on a district center in the Zare district of Balkh province, Shamsurrahman Rahmani, the governor of Zare, said.
“The district center is on the brink of collapse and Afghan forces may suffer more casualties if reinforcements are not deployed soon,” Rahmani said.
Taliban spokesmen have so far not commented on the clashes in Balkh that shares a border with Uzbekistan. The province has reported 173 positive cases of the coronavirus and 10 deaths.
As of May 1, Afghanistan reported 2,335 cases of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus, and 68 deaths, but international observers and medics on the ground believe the real number of infections could be much higher.
Afghan forces said they killed Qari Momen, a Taliban commander along with eight other fighters during an airstrike in the Khanabad district of north eastern Kunduz province on Thursday night.
A Taliban spokesman could not be contacted immediately to confirm the airstrike.
In southern Logar province, Afghan forces quelled Taliban fighters from a checkpoint of the National Defense and Security Forces in the Baraki Barak district on Thursday night.
“Afghan forces repulsed the Taliban’s attack as part of an active defense operation...killed 15 Taliban fighters, wounded six others, and destroyed large quantities of weapons and ammunition,” the federal defense ministry said in a statement.
At least four members of the Afghan forces were killed and five were injured in the clashes, it stated.
The Taliban’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said 10 Taliban fighters and 14 members of the Afghan forces were killed in Logar.
Afghanistan suffers upsurge in fighting and in coronavirus
https://arab.news/zf6np
Afghanistan suffers upsurge in fighting and in coronavirus
- The Taliban has attacked several provinces, ignoring a pledge to reduce violence as part of a peace deal signed with the US government on Feb. 29
- As of May 1, Afghanistan reported 2,335 cases of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus, and 68 deaths
French court slashes jails term for trio over 2020 teacher beheading
- Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years
PARIS, France: A French court on Monday reduced on appeal the jail sentences of three men convicted over the 2020 terrorist beheading of a teacher who showed a class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered in October 2020 by an 18-year-old radical Islamist of Chechen origin in an act that horrified France.
His attacker, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was killed in a shootout with police.
Two friends of Anzorov, French national Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, a Russian of Chechen origin, had their sentences of 16 years in prison reduced to six and seven years respectively by a Paris court of appeal.
Both were accused of having driven Anzorov and helping him to procure weapons before the beheading.
Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years.
His daughter, then aged 13, was not actually in the classroom at the time and during the first trial apologized to the teacher’s family.
The court however left the 15-year term for French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui untouched.
The quartet were among the seven men and one woman found guilty in 2024 of contributing to the climate of hatred that led to the beheading of the history and geography teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris.
Paty, who has become a free-speech icon, used the cartoons as part of an ethics class to discuss freedom of expression laws in France.
