KUNDUZ/KABUL: Afghan forces fought back a renewed series of attacks on Kunduz, killing dozens of Taliban fighters, officials said on Sunday as militants stepped up their bid to retake the northern city that they had captured briefly last year.

The attacks on Kunduz, involving hundreds of militants, have intensified days after the Taliban announced the start of their annual ‘spring offensive’, aimed at driving out the Western-backed government in Kabul.

Attacks overnight appeared aimed at cutting off Chardara district on the southwest outskirts of the city, with several checkpoints targeted, Kunduz police chief Qasim Jangalbagh said.

“They wanted to cut the road which connects the district to Kunduz city to stop us sending reinforcements,” he said.

Urban warfare causes spike in child, women casualties, says UN

In addition, he said a major attack was driven back at Charkh Ab, to the east, as the Taliban sought to stretch the city’s defences.

Kunduz police claimed 49 Taliban fighters had been killed and another 61 injured, while the defence ministry said 38 were killed and 13 wounded over the past 24 hours.

A police spokesman said four members of the security forces were killed and 11 injured.

Kunduz public health director Saad Mukhtar said six dead and 107 wounded had been brought to city hospitals over the past three days, which have been put under heavy strain by the destruction of the hospital run by aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres in a US air strike last year.

The fall of Kunduz last year followed months of attacks that began in the spring. The attacks weakened security forces before Taliban fighters seized the city centre at the end of September, holding it for two weeks before pulling out.

However, officials have made a major effort to reassure residents that there would be no repeat of last year’s demoralising collapse.

The heavy fighting around Kunduz, Afghanistan’s fifth-biggest city underlines the concern highlighted in the United Nations’ latest report on civilian casualties, which pointed to a sharp rise in the number of children killed or injured as a consequence of combat in built-up areas.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said deaths and injuries among women in the country had also spiked.

In all, 161 children were killed from January to March and 449 were injured, a 29 per cent rise over the first three months of last year, it said.

“If the fighting persists near schools, playgrounds, homes and clinics, and parties continue to use explosive weapons in those areas, particularly mortars and IED tactics, these appalling numbers of children killed and maimed will continue,” UNAMA human rights dire­ctor Danielle Bell said in a statement.

Overall civilian casualties in the period reached 1,943 — 600 deaths and 1,343 injuries. The number of deaths was down 13pc from the first quarter of 2105 but the number of injuries was 11pc higher.

Almost a third of casualties were children and there was a 5pc rise in women being killed or injured.

Meanwhile, the slow trickle of Afghan refugees returning home is at historic lows, dwarfed by the hundreds of thousands being displaced by ongoing fighting and economic problems, according to UN officials.

So far this year, about 2,200 refugees have returned to Afghanistan, on track to match 2014, which saw the lowest number of returnees since the start of a voluntary repatriation process in 2001.

“It is much lower than we would have expected,” said UN Assistant High Commissioner for Operations George Okoth-Obbo, who visited Kabul on Sunday as part of a regional trip.

More than 200,000 Afghans fled to Europe last year, according to UNHCR figures, and untold others sought sanctuary in Pakistan, Iran, and within Afghanistan, he said.

Published in Dawn, April 18th, 2016