Afghan city of Kunduz under Taliban attack

October 3, 2016

Kunduz, Oct 3: The Taliban launched an assault on Kunduz, which was the scene of intense fighting today, one year after the Islamist militia briefly took over the northern Afghan city following a lightning offensive.

The assault came just a day before President Ashraf Ghani is due to meet world powers at a major donors conference in Brussels.

The attack began in the early hours at the southern and eastern approaches to the provincial capital where the militants were engaged in battles with government forces, an AFP correspondent said.

Two Afghan army helicopters were flying over the city, which was deserted, with streets empty and shops closed.

The attack comes just over a year after the Taliban overran Kunduz, the only provincial capital to have fallen into their hands since they were ousted from power in 2001. Government control of the city has been shaky ever since.

Ghani will meet with world leaders in Brussels on Tuesday and Wednesday in a bid to secure financial aid from the international community up to 2020 to rebuild his war-ravaged country.

The meeting will try to drum up support from an international community suffering from aid fatigue as it grapples with conflicts in Syria and Iraq plus the worst migration crisis since World War II.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon are among those who will join hosts Ghani and EU President Donald Tusk.

The conference comes as Afghanistan struggles to negotiate peace with a resurgent Taliban and other militant groups who continue to wage a bloody insurgency nearly 15 years after the US invasion.

In September, Kabul signed a peace deal with notorious warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who heads the largely dormant Hezb-i-Islami militant group, a move that will have little impact on security but is a symbolic victory in efforts to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table.

Financial support is "crucial" in order "to bring about a new strategic shift towards stabilisation and possibly peace" in Afghanistan, despite the country not having "been in the headlines for many years", officials said ahead of the Brussels conference.

"Nobody can afford for Afghanistan to destabilise again," a senior EU official added.After seizing Kunduz on September 28, 2015, the Taliban held the city for two days and eventually announced they were withdrawing from the outskirts on October 15.

The United Nations said that battle left 289 people dead and hundreds more wounded.

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Cut all ties with Israel and impose arms, trade embargo; history will record our action: Iran to Muslim countries

News Network

May 5,2024

Iran has urged Muslim countries to cut all relations with the Israeli regime as means of pressuring Tel Aviv to end its ongoing genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the remarks on Saturday, addressing the 15th Heads of State and Government Summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Gambia’s capital Banjul.

“Beyond doubt, this time period will also pass by, despite all its hardships and adversities for the Palestinian nation,” he said.

“However, the manner and quality of the role that is played by us, Muslim states, in the face of this crisis will go down in history,” the top diplomat added.

“Undoubtedly, severance of diplomatic and economic ties and [imposition of] practical arms and trade embargo [on Israel] serves as an important means of cessation of its genocide in Gaza and atrocities in the West Bank and the Noble al-Quds.”

At least 34,654 people have died in Gaza since October 7, when the Israeli regime began the war in response to al-Aqsa Storm, a retaliatory operation by the coastal sliver’s resistance groups.

Despite the unabated campaign of bloodshed and destruction, the regime has so far fallen short of realizing its goals, including defeating Gaza’s resistance, causing forced displacement of the territory’s entire population to neighboring Egypt, and enabling the release of those who were taken captive during al-Aqsa Storm.

Amir-Abdollahian said Gaza’s developments proved that elimination of the Palestinian resistance “was nothing but an illusion.”

“Because the Israeli regime is not a legitimate government. It is only an occupying apartheid power,” he said, adding, “Passage of time is not going to lend legitimacy to an occupying power.”

The foreign minister asserted that realization of sustainable peace and security in the region was only possible through cessation of the regime’s occupation of Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, return of the Palestinian refugees to their homeland, and manifestation of Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

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