The Afghan government described the meeting as “the start of the first ever official peace talks” between the two sides.

U.S. and Chinese officials also attended the discussions Tuesday at a hilltop resort in Pakistan.

“The participants agreed to continue talks to create an environment conducive for peace and reconciliation process,” the Pakistani government said in a statement Wednesday.

The next meeting is expected to take place after the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

With U.S. encouragement, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had been seeking dialogue with the Taliban.

“This is an important step in advancing prospects for a credible peace,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said of the meeting in Pakistan.

But it remains unclear how far the talks might progress.

Talks seen as ‘starting point’

As U.S. and other NATO troops are drawing down their numbers in Afghanistan, the Taliban insurgency continues to rage across wide areas of the country. The militants attempted a brazen attack on the national parliament last month.

The Afghan Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that it hoped the talks “would be a starting point for the process so it could prevent the shedding of more innocent Afghans’ blood and further destruction of the country.”

The U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan ended last year, leaving the Afghan military to lead the fight against the Taliban. The thousands of NATO troops that remain in Afghanistan are there in a training and support role.

“The United States has been encouraging the Afghans to participate in an Afghan-led process that would bring about a political reconciliation in Afghanistan and a deescalation, if not an end, to the violence that has wracked that country for more than a decade now,” Earnest said.

Analysts have suggested that the Taliban may want to delay formal peace talks in anticipation of a stronger negotiating position down the line.

Previous contacts between Afghan government and Taliban representatives, notably in the Middle Eastern nation Qatar, have failed to bear fruit.

Afghan forces have repelled a Taliban coordinated attack in eastern Kunar province.

Officials at the Ministry of Defense say that a group of Taliban insurgents attacked security check posts in Baryali and Bargam areas of Ghazi Abad District around 04:00 am this morning.

According to the officials, the attacks begin from four angles but security forces gave a befitting response to the militants and failed their intentions.

Officials say that forces used heavy weapons in the clash in which dozens of militants have been killed and several others wounded.

Two policemen also embraced martyrdom in the skirmish while defending their country.

Taliban had not commented on the report by the time this report was filed.

The Taliban militants group and affiliates of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist group are extending news “BLACK HOLES” in Afghanistan, Reporters Without Borders (RWB)/Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) said Tuesday.

The France-based non-profit organization that promotes and defends freedom of information and freedom of the press, called on the authorities to do everything possible to protect journalists and media outlets in Afghanistan.

The statement further added that Taliban have been intensifying armed attacks on civilians and openly threatening freedom of information despite countries such as the United States, Iran, Norway and Qatar are “normalizing” their relations with the Taliban and certain Afghan politicians are sitting with them at the negotiating table.

“The Taliban, and now members of Islamic State, are sowing terror in several northeastern provinces including Badakhshan, Nangarhar, Baghlan and Nuristan. Freedom of information in these provinces has gone from being limited to non-existent, giving rise to new information black holes,” RSF said.

It also added that the media outlets have been the targets of armed attacks. “They include Radio Donya Novin in Charikar (Parwan province) and the regional bureaux of the independent Afghan news agency Pajhwok and the US government-funded Voice of America (VOA) in Jalalabad (Nangarhar province) on 12 June, when at least two VOA journalists were injured. Several sources described this as “the first Islamic State action” in Afghanistan,” RSF added.

The statement also added that journalists have been forced to stop working due to intense clashes in some regions, especially in Badakhshan and Nangarhar where entire villages have fallen under rebel control.

“These provinces now rank alongside Helmand in the south and Khost in the east as regions where the Taliban have terrorized the media,” RSF said.

A journalist in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar, quoted in the report on the condition of anonymity, said “Nangarhar has always been a violent province but the situation has become even worse in recent months.”

“The rebels are carrying out attacks almost every day but we cannot cover them. The security forces have told us they cannot guarantee our safety and we don’t want to put our lives in danger, so we cannot do our job. And working for the media has become even more difficult for women journalists. Sometimes they cannot even leave their homes,” the journalist said.

RSF also added that Taliban and other armed groups are unfortunately not the only ones who target the media but the warlords, local politicians and government forces also help to create a climate of fear designed to keep journalists at a distance, especially during military operations.

Spokesman of Ministry of Interior (MoI) has said that foreign forces’ airstrikes in close coordination with Afghan security forces have proved effective.

Sediq Seddiqi told a press conference that the fast-emerging Daesh group was a major threat to the security of the country, region and the world.

He said the world should join hands to fight the common menace. He said that precise airstrikes by NATO pounding militants’ positions in coordination with Afghan forces were effective.

“Such strikes sabotage gathering of enemy and air assault caused more damage to the enemy. Until our own air force gets these qualities we need foreign troops’ air support,” Seddiqi continued.

According to Seddiqi, the drone strikes in Achin district of Nangarhar province have taken place in coordination with Afghan forces that inflicted heavy damage on Daesh group. Fifty members of the group, he added, had been killed in the strikes on Monday night.

Dawlat Waziri, deputy spokesman of Ministry of Defence, said: “Daesh or any other terrorist group is Afghans enemy and we will sternly fight them.”

Currently, he said, seven operations were ongoing in eight provinces where heavy casualties have been inflicted on insurgents.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of the Afghan Islamist organization Hezb-e Islami, has called on his followers to support the militant group Islamic State (IS) in the fight against the Taliban.

Hekmatyar made the announcement in a statement released on July 5, according to Afghan media reports.

Hekmatyar’s comments come amid reports of intensified fighting between IS and Taliban militants in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangahar Province, as IS tries to gain a foothold in the country.

IS’s media wing declared in January that Pakistan and Afghanistan were part of one region called the province of Khorasan, reportedly prompting hundreds of Taliban militants to join IS.

Nangahar officials said last month that around 100 local families had been displaced by the fighting, while on July 6, local media reported that at least 49 IS militants died in separate government drone strikes in the province.

Fearing that IS is gaining traction in Afghanistan, the Taliban published a rare open letter in June in which the group’s deputy leader, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor, warned IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to stay out of Afghanistan. The letter called on Baghdadi to stop recruiting Taliban members and to refrain from starting an insurgency in Afghanistan.

“The Islamic Emirate (Taliban) does not consider the multiplicity of jihadi ranks beneficial either for jihad or for Muslims,” Mansoor reportedly wrote.

In his July 5 statement, which was posted on the website of Hezb-e Islami’s official newspaper, Shahadat, Hekmatyar warned that if the Taliban “fight with those who have quit the Taliban and declared allegiance to the Islamic State, help these militants, because the Taliban are sworn enemies of Hezb-e Islami.”

Hezb-e Islami, one of the strongest anti-Soviet mujahedin factions in the 1980s, has claimed several high-profile attacks in the Afghan capital and elsewhere, including a May 2013 suicide bombing in Kabul that killed at least 15 people.

A prime minister during Afghanistan’s civil war in the 1990s, Hekmatyar in 2003 was labeled a “specially designated global terrorist” by the U.S. State Department, which accuses him of taking part in and supporting attacks by Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

The first U.S. drone operation targeting purported Daesh fighters in Afghanistan has killed at least 49 fighters in eastern Afghanistan, officials confirmed Tuesday.

The first of two strikes targeted fighters in Nangarhar province’s Achin district, killing at least 12 militants at midday on Monday, said the provincial governor’s spokesman Ahmad Zia Adulzai.

Abdulzai said initial reports indicated the fighters were moving to a new location and that another strike in the same district shortly afterwards left at least 37 militants dead.

“This is the first and bloodiest drone strike on Daesh fighters in the area which has killed quite a big number of militants,” Abdulzai told Anadolu Agency.

He said the fighters were planning to attack rival Taliban militants in neighboring areas.

There have been a string of violent clashes between the two groups, especially in Nangarhar province where self-styled Daesh fighters have managed to push the Taliban out of the Achin and Nazian districts in recent months.

At least 11 militants from both sides were killed and two others wounded when militants loyal to the groups clashed over territory in the province’s Nazian district on Sunday.

Militants claiming loyalty to Daesh have reportedly taken control of parts of five districts in Nangarhar, according to an Afghan official, and established contact with the Daesh leadership in Syria.

The group’s fighters are thought to be former Taliban fighters who have rebranded themselves following the territorial victories won by Daesh in Iraq and Syria in the past year.

A suicide car bomber has reportedly hit a convoy of foreign troops Tuesday in Kabul with casualties feared.

The blast took place in Shah Shahid area of Kabul when a vehicle belonging to foreign forces was passing by the area.

Ministry of Interior Affairs (MoI) spokesman Sediq Sediqqi confirmed the blast. However, he didn’t provide a detail on possible casualties.

No group including the Taliban has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.

Taliban key commander named Mullah Abdul Khaliq was killed in the eastern Laghman province on Tuesday, a statement from the provincial government said Tuesday.

“A group of Taliban militants under Mullah Abdul Khaliq attacked police checkpoints in Badro village of Alishing district early today and police returned fire killing the commander and injuring another,” the statement said.

Mullah Abdul Khaliq, according to the statement, was a powerful military leader in the eastern Laghman province and adjoining areas and his death is a major setback to the Taliban in east Afghanistan.

Taliban militants fighting the government to regain power are yet to make comments.

Tajikistan is preparing to rebuff the extremist groups that are intent to cross the state border, said Chairman of the Center of Strategic Studies of Tajikistan Kholiknazar Khudoberdy at the press conference in Dushanbe on Monday.

“Currently, the reservists are getting ready in the south of Tajikistan. We should be ready for any events, everything can be expected from Taliban,” he said. “The situation in the north of Afghanistan is getting worth each day.”

“We have already warned in 2014 that those forces gathered on the Tajik-Afghan border may significantly impact on the security and the entire situation in Central Asia. Now our predictions are getting confirmed. If they were about 800 people in the early 2014, now their number has grown to 8,000. In two years, their number has increased 10-fold,” he said.

Khudoberdy noted that except for Taliban, there are also the militants of the Islamic State. “In early 2015, about $700 million were sent from the IS in Iraq for the creation of the units all over Afghanistan. It is a luck that Taliban does not recognize them. Conflicts between IS and Taliban are seen in all provinces of Afghanistan. Let them crash each other, both of them are hostile for us,” he added.