The National Resistance Front (FNR), the main opposition group against the Taliban, announced on Saturday that it has launched a major offensive in several provinces in northern Afghanistan, including Panshir, which it claims has liberated three areas.
The FNR and the Taliban have been opposing each other for months, but this will be the first offensive launched by the group of Ahmed Massoud, son of legendary commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, since the fall of their stronghold in the Panshir Valley in September. 80 kilometers north of Kabul…
“This is our first attack since September,” Ali Maisam Nazary, FNR’s head of foreign affairs, told AFP.
He pointed out that the attack was launched in “12 provinces of the country, primarily in the north”.
“Since Ahmed Massoud (…) ordered his troops to launch an offensive last night, three major areas of Panshir have been liberated,” he assured.
However, Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid denied that “military incidents” had occurred in Panshir or elsewhere in the country.
“Some rioters’ media claims are false,” he wrote on Twitter.
Presenting itself as the last democratic stronghold in Afghanistan, the FNR was unable to prevent the Taliban, who came to power in mid-August, from seizing Panshir in early September.
This province came under Soviet occupation neither in the 1980s nor when the Taliban came to power a decade later.
source: Noticias
