The Taliban warned on Wednesday that it was ready to fight, after Afghan forces received orders to resume strikes in response to a series of bloody attacks that the group denied involvement in, and ISIS claimed responsibility for one of them.
Yesterday's attack targeted a maternity hospital in Kabul, killing 24 people in a new toll announced by an official on Wednesday, followed by a suicide bombing at a funeral in the east of the country that killed 24 mourners.
He held Afghan President Ashraf Ghani the Taliban and ISIS responsible for these attacks, and ordered Afghan forces to return to the "offensive situation and resume operations against the enemy."
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the funeral bombing, but it did not claim the attack on the hospital.
The Taliban denied any involvement in Tuesday's attacks, and warned that it was "fully prepared" to repel any strikes by Afghan forces, and said in a statement early Wednesday, "From now on, the responsibility for further escalation of violence and its ramifications rests with the Kabul administration."
The authorities have responded to the Taliban's warning by saying that this group has always been "violent and warless".
"The Taliban cannot deny its involvement in this violence as simple, including the recent actions," Siddiqui Siddiqui, a spokesman for the Afghan president, told reporters on Wednesday.
The Afghan government had stopped its offensive operations against the Taliban after the signing of a peace agreement between the movement and the United States at the end of February in Doha.
The government says that the decision to resume military operations against the Taliban is a response to a military escalation by the movement in more than one Afghan province.
International condemnation
In a related context, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on the government of Afghanistan and the Taliban to cooperate in bringing the perpetrators of the two attacks to justice.
In a statement, Pompeo condemned the attacks in the strongest terms, describing them as "acts of absolute evil," and indicated that the Taliban had denied responsibility for them.
Pompeo added that the ongoing peace process in Afghanistan constitutes an important opportunity for the Afghan people "to build a united front against terrorist threats."
In turn, the European Union's foreign policy coordinator Josep Borrell expressed the Federation's dissatisfaction with "the terrible inhumanity in the terrorist attacks today," adding during a remote meeting with the defense ministers of the European Union that "we cannot express in words about the atrocities that we witnessed today in Afghanistan."
"Dozens of innocent civilians have been killed or wounded in these terrorist acts that are rejected," Borrell said.