KABUL: Heavy fighting between government forces and the militant Islamic State (IS) group has claimed dozens of lives in eastern Afghanistan, officials said on Sunday.

In recent months insurgents claiming allegiance to IS had largely appeared to be bottled up in a mountainous area along the border with Pakistan under threat of US air strikes.

The latest attacks indicate the group remains a potent threat to a government already battling an insurgency dominated by the rival Taliban.

At least a dozen Afghan security personnel and civilians had been killed, with another 18 wounded, the governor of Nangarhar province, Saleem Khan Kunduzi, said in a statement.

Hundreds of police personnel, soldiers engaged in fighting

Local officials claimed more than 100 IS fighters had been killed in fighting in Nangarhar over the past three days, although casualty figures varied and could not be independently verified.

“There is no doubt that Daesh does not respect anyone,” Kunduzi said, using a common term for IS. “They kill people, regardless of whether they’re a child or a woman. They burn down madressahs, mosques and schools.”

As many as 25 houses had been burned down in Kowt district, and five civilians were reported kidnapped, Nangarhar officials said.

Hundreds of police personnel and soldiers were engaged in the area with reinforcements on the way, provincial police chief Zarawar Zahid said.

At a small event on Sunday in Kabul, the head of Afghanistan’s civil society federation, Sediq Ansari, blamed local leaders for being negligent in the face of IS threats and called on them to be suspended.

“They should be accountable for every drop of blood that has been shed in Nangarhar so it becomes a lesson to other officials,” he told reporters.

Militants linked to IS have not made as much progress in Afghanistan as in Syria and Iraq, where the group seized major cities and wide swaths of territory and attracted thousands of recruits.

Published in Dawn, June 27th, 2016