KABUL: A wave of Taliban attacks and violence has killed dozens across Afghanistan, even as talks are underway between the government and the insurgents in Qatar, officials said on Tuesday.

A statement from the defence ministry said four army soldiers were killed late on Monday night in Taliban attacks on checkpoints in Kunduz province.

According to the ministry, 15 Taliban fighters were also killed and 12 were wounded. The details were impossible to independently verify as Kunduz is off limits to journalists and the Taliban hold sway across most of the province’s rural areas.

However, Ghulam Rabani Rabani, a provincial council member in Kunduz, gave a significantly higher casualty toll. At least 25 members of the security forces were killed by the Taliban in separate attacks in the Dasht-e-Archi district, including 13 soldiers and four policemen, he said.

At least eight other soldiers were killed near Kunduz city, the provincial capital, he said. Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said the insurgents were behind all the attacks. The Taliban were able to seize weapons and ammunition from the checkpoints, he said.

Meanwhile, in southern Helmand province, Abdul Zahir Haqyar, administration chief in Washers district, was shot and killed by unknown gunmen on Monday night, said Abdul Nabi Elham, the provincial governor of Helmand.

Two of Haqyar’s bodyguards were wounded in the shooting. No one immediately claimed responsibility for that attack.

Separately, in southern Urozgan province, at least 10 people, including women and children, were wounded, when a sticky bomb placed on a motorcycle exploded, according to the provincial governor, Mohammad Omar Sherzad.

A private car belonging to police officers was the target of the explosion, he said.An angry mob ransacked a local radio station in northern Afghanistan last week after a mosque imam incited the attackers, claiming loud music played by the station had interfered with his prayer service, an international journalists group said.

The International Federation of Journalists condemned the attack last Friday in the city of Kunduz, the capital of Kunduz province.

It quoted Mohsen Ahmad, director of the Zohra Radio that was targeted in the attack, as saying the mob had damaged station equipment and forced it to halt transmission for several hours. No one was hurt in the attack.

The safety situation for journalists in Afghanistan must be a major priority for the Afghanistan government, urged the Brusseles-based IFJ.

The Afghan Independent Journalists Association said the same mob tried to also attack two other nearby radio stations but were prevented from entering by policemen who arrived at the scene.

Afghanistan has seen a wave of attacks in recent months against journalists, human rights activists and civil society members. The international press freedom group Reporters Without Borders has called the country one of the world’s deadliest for journalists.

On Jan 1, journalist and human rights activist Bismillah Adil Aimaq was shot and killed by unidentified gunmen on the road near Feroz Koh, the capital of western Ghor province.

He was the fifth journalists slain in attacks since October. Rahmatullah Nekzad, who headed the journalists union in eastern Ghazni province, was killed in an attack by armed men outside his home in late December. He had previously worked for the Al Jazeera satellite TV channel.

Afghanistan’s intelligence department claimed two perpetrators in that attack were subsequently arrested and aired video recordings of the two, with their purported confessions to the slaying and to being Taliban. However, the Taliban denied involvement in the killing, calling it a cowardly act. Large swaths of Ghazni province are under Taliban control.

Published in Dawn, January 20th, 2021