The National Resistance Front announced today, Saturday, that it has launched a major attack against the Taliban movement in a number of northern Afghan provinces, including Panjshir province, and confirmed that it had "liberated" 3 areas, while the Taliban denied any military action in the country.
Isolated battles have been taking place for months between the National Resistance Forces led by Ahmed Masoud (son of the historical leader Ahmed Shah Masoud) and the ruling Taliban fighters in Kabul, but this attack is the first launched by Masoud's group since the fall of his stronghold in the Panjshir Valley (80 km north of Kabul) in September last September.
"This is our first attack since September," the front's foreign relations official, Ali Maysam Nazari, was quoted by the French Press Agency as saying, explaining that the attack included 12 states in the country, most of them in the north.
He stressed that his forces liberated 3 areas and seized the main roads in the advanced positions of the Taliban movement in the region, noting that "a number of Taliban fighters asked for a deadline to surrender."
But Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid denied that there had been any "military incidents" in Panjshir or anywhere else in the country.
"The allegations made by some militants in the media are false," he wrote on Twitter, adding that "there are thousands of well-equipped soldiers of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in Panjshir and other regions."
The National Resistance Front was unable to prevent the Taliban, who came to power in mid-August, from seizing Panjshir.
A meeting between Ahmed Masoud and Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Mottaki, which was followed by informal discussions between the National Resistance Front and the Taliban delegation last January in Tehran, did not lead to any progress due to the deep differences between them.