The Taliban killed eight resistance fighters from a national oppositiongroup in a firefight in the north of Afghanistan, police said on Friday.
Since storming back to power in August the Taliban have flatly deniedfacing organised resistance, but the gun battle on Thursday night maydemonstrate that armed opposition is building against their hardline rule.
Fighters from the National Resistance Front (NRF), a group led by the sonof legendary late anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, fought Talibanforces in Balkh province.
Eight NRF fighters were killed in a “direct clash” with the Taliban,provincial police spokesman Asif Waziri told reporters in an audio message.
Waziri said Taliban forces also seized ammunition and machine guns from theNRF fighters. An NRF spokesman was yet to respond to a request for commentfrom AFP.
The fighting comes less than two weeks after Taliban foreign minister AmirKhan Muttaqi held talks with Ahmad Massoud, the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud,in Tehran.
After that summit an official for the resistance faction said the NRF andTaliban remained on “separate pages” with no prospect of reconciliation.
Massoud’s NRF forces were the last to hold out against the Taliban takeoverlast year, retreating to the Panjshir Valley which fell in September, weeksafter government troops capitulated.
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The Panjshir Valley is famed as the site of resistance to Soviet forces inthe 1980s and the Taliban in the late 1990s, during their first stint inpower.
Its most revered figure is Ahmad Shah Massoud, known as the “Lion ofPanjshir”, who was assassinated by Al Qaeda in 2001, two days before the9/11 attacks.
His son has since picked up the mantle and there have been reports of hisefforts to organise a resistance with other exiled Afghan leaders, whichTaliban authorities had so far denied.
The Taliban have also faced resistance from the regional chapter of themilitant Islamic State group, IS-Khorasan, an extremist group which aims tocreate a global caliphate.
SOURCE: AFP
