NATO special forces have reached Kunduz to bolster Afghan troops after the Taliban seized the strategic northern city, the military coalition said Wednesday.

“Coalition special forces are on the ground in Kunduz advising their Afghan counterparts,” a NATO spokesman said.

The forces are comprised of US, British and German troops, a Western military source told AFP on condition of anonymity, without specifying the number.

NATO said US forces had also carried out three air strikes in total since Tuesday — two on the outskirts of Kunduz and one near the city’s airport, which is currently under attack by Taliban insurgents.

After years of costly involvement in Afghanistan, most NATO troops pulled back from the frontlines by the end of 2014, although a residual force of around 13,000 remains for training and counter-terrorism operations.

The Taliban’s incursion into Kunduz, barely nine months after the NATO combat mission ended, raises troubling questions over the capacity of Afghan forces as they battle militants largely on their own.

It has also renewed questions about Washington’s plan to withdraw most US forces next year.

thepeninsulaqatar.com

At least 160 Taliban insurgents have been killed in a US troops operation in northern Kunduz province, local officials said on Wednesday.

The insurgents were targeted while gathered in various parts of Kunduz city, officials said.

Meanwhile, Faiz Mohammad Amiri, deputy provincial council head of Kunduz has urged government to launch a military operation against the insurgents.

Amiri who is with the security forces at Kunduz airport said that the Taliban insurgents attacked the airport on Tuesday night and were in clashes with the security forces for several hours.

“The insurgents moved back after the response of the security forces,” he said. “The commando forces have arrived by air in Kunduz city but we are still waiting for the ground forces.”

He also said that the Taliban insurgents had sustained massive casualties in clashes with the security forces on Tuesday night.

On Tuesday, the Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said the U.S. forces conducted an airstrike on the outskirts of Kunduz city which fell to the Taliban late Monday.

The airstrike was a “force-protection strike conducted by a fixed-wing manned aircraft” to eliminate a threat to coalition and Afghan forces in the area, Cook told reporters.

“We strongly condemn the attacks in Kunduz, and stand with the Afghan people in our commitment to Afghanistan’s peace and security,” he said.

The situation is a setback for Afghan forces, Cook acknowledged, but he said the United States has confidence in the Afghan government forces.

“We’ve seen them respond in recent weeks and months to the challenges they face, and they’re doing the same thing in Kunduz right now,” he said.

The situation remains fluid, the press secretary said, adding that it highlights the “ongoing challenge that the Afghan security forces are taking on every single day [and] the very dangerous situation that they face.”

The United States will continue to work closely with its international partners and the Afghan government, he added.

tolonews.com

Taliban fighters were attempting to seize control of the airport in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz late today, after the militants seized a provincial capital for the first time since their ouster 14 years ago.

The fighters were flooding into the airport and about 80 per cent of the complex was under their control, according to an Afghan security official, who asked not to be named.

A Reuters eyewitness said there were was heavy fighting around the airport.

The U.S. military says it launched an airstrike on the city of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan early Tuesday, after it was captured by the Taliban the previous day.

U.S. Army Col. Brian Tribus, spokesman for the U.S. and NATO missions in Afghanistan, said the strike was carried out “in order to eliminate a threat to the force.”

Afghan forces have launched an operation to try and retake the city, which fell to the Taliban on Monday.

Doctors Without Borders said its trauma center was at full capacity after receiving 102 wounded patients after heavy fighting Monday.

It is the first time the militants have seized a major city in Afghanistan since their regime was overthrown by a U.S.-led coalition in 2001. The fall of the city comes as President Ashraf Ghani marks one year office.

The Taliban has been pressing attacks against Afghan security forces since the U.S. combat mission there officially ended last year and the government assumed responsibility for security.

Fewer than 10,000 U.S. troops are in Afghanistan to provide training and other support.

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) is expanding its presence in Afghanistan, recruiting followers in nearly 75 percent of the country’s 34 provinces, according to a United Nations report.

That revelation comes less than a year after ISIS announced the establishment of a province in the Khorasan, a historic name for a regions that encompasses Afghanistan, Pakistan, parts of Iran, and other surrounding countries.

“The number of groups and individuals who are openly declaring either loyalty to or sympathy with ISIL continues to grow in a number of provinces in Afghanistan,” said the UN report, which has been quoted by various news agencies, including Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Afghan government sources told the UN that “sightings of the groups with some form of ISIL branding” or sympathy were reported in 25 provinces in the country, added the UN report.

ISIS, which has captured swathes of Iraq and Syria, has been trying to establish a foothold in Afghanistan, posing a challenge to the Taliban.

An estimated 10 percent of Taliban members are considered ISIS sympathizers, the UN learned from Afghan security forces, according to the report prepared by the UN’s al-Qaeda sanctions committee.

Following the release of the UN report, local Afghan officials reportedly said that at least 300 militants linked to ISIS attacked police checkpoints in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province, along the Pakistan border.

BBC quoted a local official, saying that at least two police officers and 60 militants were killed in the attack in the Achin district, close to Pakistan.

ISIS loyalists primarily target Afghan security forces, except in Nangarhar province, where they are fighting the Taliban for control of the illicit opium trade, revealed the UN report.

Al-Qaeda-linked foreign fighters from Pakistan and Uzbekistan have pledged allegiance to ISIS after leaving their country and have “rebranded themselves” in recent months, added the report.

Moreover, up to 70 ISIS jihadists from Iraq and Syria are now part of the core ISIS branch in Afghanistan, noted the report.

The growing emergence of ISIS is not considered to be an “immediate increased threat” by Afghan security authorities, said the report, adding that they are nevertheless monitoring the “potential new threat.”

Afghanistan’s Ministry of Interior (MoI) denied the presence of ISIS in 25 Afghan provinces, adding that the country’s National Security Council had approved a strategy to fight the jihadist group, reports Pajhwok Afghan News.

MoI Spokesman Sadique Sadiqui did acknowledge that ISIS poses a “huge threat on national and regional level.”

“He said the activities of IS had been traced by the intelligence agencies in Helmand and Nangarhar provinces,” adds the report.

The United States has expressed concerns about ISIS’ efforts to establish a stronghold in Afghanistan, reports Voice of America, citing an anonymous senior State Department official.

“It is a newly emerging threat,” said the American official. “It is unpredictable as yet how it might evolve. It is something that we are taking seriously.”

The U.S. has been combating terrorism in Afghanistan since October 2001. President Obama declared an end to the U.S. combat mission there at the end of last year, withdrawing most American troops.

The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for gunning down an Italian citizen on the street in the diplomatic quarter of Bangladesh’s capital, according to an intelligence group monitoring jihadist threats.

The claim by the Sunni extremist group could not immediately be verified independently, but if confirmed would mark the group’s first attack in the secular South Asian nation. Bangladesh has been struggling in recent months with the rapid rise of hardline Islamist groups, banning several that have been blamed in the killing of four bloggers this year.

Police in Dhaka said they had no leads in tracing the three unidentified assailants who, riding on a single motorcycle, drove up alongside Italian citizen Cesare Tavella and shot him Monday night.

“We have no idea, we can’t say anything definitively for now,” police official Mukhlesur Rahman said, declining to comment on the IS claim of responsibility. “Let the investigation happen.”

Witnesses said they heard at least three gunshots and saw the attackers flee after Tavella fell to the ground, according to police. Tavella was taken to a nearby hospital, where doctors declared him dead. The Italian consulate could not immediately be reached for comment.

Tavella, in his 50s, had been living alone in Dhaka after arriving in May to work on food security issues for a Netherlands-based church cooperative called ICCO, according to his colleague Alo Rani Dhali.

The Islamic State reportedly said in a statement dated Monday that a “security detachment” had tracked and killed Tavella with “silenced weapons” in Dhaka, according to the SITE intelligence group’s website. It was not immediately clear how close the witnesses were to the attack, and how the gunshots could have been heard if a silencer was used.

It warned that “citizens of the crusader coalition” would not be safe in Muslim nations. Almost 90 percent of Bangladesh’s 160 million population practices Islam.

Dhaka police were questioning witnesses including street beggars who allegedly heard the gunshots and saw the attackers flee, local broadcaster Somoy Television said Tuesday.

One of the witnesses, Sitara Begum, said she was terrified upon hearing the shots while she was sitting on the road at an intersection the near the scene of the attack.

“I was looking at the east side of the road, but hearing the gunshots I looked at the west side and saw two men run and get onto a waiting bike. They fled quickly,” Begum said.

Despite the government’s banning several radical Islamist groups from the country, intelligence sources have confirmed that several hardline groups are active in Bangladesh. The local group Ansarullah Bangla Team, which has apparent links with al-Qaida on the Indian subcontinent, has claimed responsibility for killing four bloggers who criticized Islam’s Prophet Muhammed and radical Islam.

A suicide car bombing killed at least nine people and wounded more than 50 at a cricket match in Afghanistan on Sunday, officials said.

The attack took place in southeastern Paktika province, on the border with Pakistan, the officials said.

Authorities initially said the game being played at the time of the blast was football, but an interior ministry statement later said it was a cricket match.

The attack probably targeted members of the local government watching the game, officials said.

A similar bombing last year at a volleyball match killed at least 50 people in the same province.

The Taliban denied responsibility for the latest attack. The militant Islamist group rarely claims attacks with a high number of civilian casualties.

Since the withdrawal of most foreign troops from Afghanistan last year, Afghan security forces have been fighting the Taliban with limited support.

The Taliban was ousted by a U.S.-led coalition in 2001 and has been waging an insurgency for over a decade.

At least 22 people, largely militants, were killed after Taliban fighters attacked Kunduz city, the capital of Afghanistan’s northern Kunduz province early Monday, in an effort to seize the city’s control, authorities said.

The attacks occurred at dawn after hundreds of Taliban militants stormed from the west, north and east of the city, 250 km north of Afghan capital of Kabul, sparking heavy clashes.

“Two killed and nearly 40 wounded were admitted to hospitals in Kunduz city following the fighting in Kunduz city this morning. Most of the injured were civilians, who received shrapnel and bullet wounds,” Dr. Sahhid Mukhtar, director of the provincial health department, told Xinhua.

The number of casualties may rise as several wounded remained in critical condition, he added.

“The security forces fought back at around 10:00 a.m. local time, forcing the militants to withdraw from many parts of the city. At least 20 militants had been killed while dozens other attackers were injured. Sporadic fighting is still going on in outer sides of the city,” a provincial security source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The militants also launched attacks on neighboring Chardara and Archi districts.

The province, bordering Tajikistan, was the scene of heavy fighting earlier this year as security forces repelled militants who tried to take control of several districts near Kunduz city.

The Taliban has intensified attacks over the past couple of months since the Afghan security forces assumed the full security responsibility from NATO-led troops on Jan. 1.