Kunduz: 56 Taliban terrorists, 20 Afghan forces members, 5 civilians killed

A total of 56 Taliban terrorists have been killed in Kunduz during a joint clearance overnight operation by Afghan forces,  the Ministry of Interior said in a statement on Sunday.

The statement further added that around 20 members of Afghan National and Defense Forces (ANDSF) along with five civilians were also killed as a result of the Taliban suicide attack on Saturday. Besides this, around 85 ANDSF members and civilians have been reported to be injured.

Taliban fighters launched a major attack in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz in the early hours of Saturday morning, setting off gun battles and air strikes through the day in a bid to gain control of the city located on a key highway providing easy access to much of northern border provinces.

The attack came amid the peace talks going on between the Taliban leaders and negotiators from the United States to finalize a deal with for the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.

As the fighting went on, Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-born U.S. diplomat leading negotiations for Washington, tweeted that he had told his Taliban counterparts "that violence like this must stop". "Ultimately, war will only end when all sides agree it must end," he said. Negotiations continued on Saturday but there was no indication of when an agreement might be reached.

A U.S.-Taliban accord would not in itself end the fighting in Afghanistan, but it would open the way for talks between the Taliban and the government in Kabul for a wider peace agreement. However, the operation in Kunduz appeared to underline the Taliban's determination to secure as strong a position as possible on the battlefield ahead of negotiations with the Afghan government over the future of the country.

About 20,000 foreign troops, most of them American, are now in Afghanistan as part of a U.S.-led NATO mission to train, assist and advise Afghan forces. Several thousand U.S. forces also carry out counter-terrorism operations. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday the United States had had good negotiations going on with the Taliban but had not yet reached a deal with them on U.S. troops withdrawing from Afghanistan.

Sources in the Taliban said Trump's statement that the United States would continue to maintain a force in Afghanistan even after a deal was reached was unacceptable to them as they were demanding a complete pull-out of foreign forces. Despite the peace talks, fighting between the Taliban and Afghan forces, who are backed by U.S. airpower, has not subsided.

More than 1,500 civilians were killed or injured last month, according to the United Nations. An American service member was killed in combat operations in Afghanistan on Thursday, the U.S. military said, the third to be killed here in the past eight days.

(With inputs from agencies)