KABUL: The Taliban on Saturday rejected a newspaper report claiming their fighters had received rewards from Moscow’s spies to kill US troops in Afghanistan.

The New York Times reported on Friday that bounties offered by a notorious arm of Russia’s military intelligence service gave incentives to Taliban fighters to target US forces, just as US President Donald Trump tries to withdraw troops and end America’s longest war.

“The nineteen-year jihad of the Islamic Emirate is not indebted to the beneficence of any intelligence organ or foreign country,” the Taliban said in a statement issued in Kabul.

The group also denied previous US accusations it was given arms by Russia.

“The Islamic Emirate has made use of weapons, facilities and tools ... that were already present in Afghanistan or are war spoils frequently seized from the opposition in battles.” The Taliban said home-made explosives accounted for most of the casualties among US forces.

The group reiterated it was committed to an accord signed with Washington in February that paves the way for withdrawing all foreign forces from Afghanistan by mid next year.

Earlier on Saturday Russia also denounced the New York Times report.

The “baseless and anonymous accusations,” published by the newspaper, had “already led to direct threats to the life of employees of the Russian Embassies in Washington DC and London,” the Russian Embassy in Washing­­­ton wrote on Twitter.

“Stop producing #fakenews that provoke life threats, @nytimes,” it added in a later tweet.

Published in Dawn, June 28th, 2020