Taliban launch 'massive attack' on Afghan city of Kunduz

Kabul: The Taliban have launched a new large-scale attack on one of Afghanistan's main cities, Kunduz, and taken hospital patients as hostages, the government said Saturday, even as the insurgent group continued negotiations with the United States on ending America's longest war.

The militants, who have demanded that all foreign forces leave Afghanistan, now control or hold sway over roughly half of the country and are at their strongest since their 2001 defeat by a U.S.-led invasion. Presidential spokesman Sediq Seddiqi said Afghan security forces were repelling the attack in parts of the city, a strategic crossroads with easy access to much of northern Afghanistan as well as the capital, Kabul, about 200 miles (335 kilometres) away.

The Taliban were in control of the Kunduz hospital and both sides in the fighting had casualties, provincial council member Ghulam Rabani Rabani told The Associated Press. He could not give an exact number. The militants had taken hospital patients as hostages, defence ministry spokesman Rohullah Ahmadzai told reporters in Kabul. He did not say how many. "We could very easily attack but we don't want civilian casualties," he said. Hospital officials could not immediately be reached. The spokesman asserted that 26 Taliban fighters had been killed in an airstrike but did not mention any casualties among civilians or Afghan security forces.

The Taliban launched the "massive attack" from several different points around the city overnight, said Sayed Sarwar Hussaini, spokesman for the provincial police chief. "I can confirm that intense gun battles are going on around the city, but the Taliban have not been able to overrun any security checkpoint," he said. Reinforcements had arrived and Afghan air forces were supporting ground forces, Hussaini said. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid in a Twitter post called the attack "large-scale."

The Taliban have continued bloody assaults on civilians and security forces even as their leaders meet with a U.S. peace envoy in Qatar to negotiate an end to nearly 18 years of war. Talks continued on Saturday, the Taliban spokesman said. Both sides in recent days have signalled they are close to a deal. Some 20,000 U.S. and NATO forces remain in Afghanistan after formally ending their combat role in 2014. They continue to train and support Afghan forces fighting the Taliban and a local affiliate of the Islamic State group. The United States for its part seeks Taliban guarantees that Afghanistan will no longer be a launching pad for terror attacks such as the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the U.S. by al-Qaida.

The Taliban government had harboured al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Many Afghans worry that an abrupt departure of foreign troops will leave Afghan forces vulnerable and further embolden the Taliban, who already portray a U.S. withdrawal as their victory. The Taliban seized Kunduz, at the heart of a major agricultural region near Tajikistan, for around two weeks in 2015 before withdrawing in the face of a NATO-backed Afghan offensive. The insurgents pushed into the city centre a year later, briefly raising their flag before gradually being driven out again.