Continued chaos in Afghanistan serves someone’s purpose, says deputy of Takhar province The Afghan people hold the US administration responsible for the chaos ensuing in their country, a senior Afghan official said on Saturday.

Whatever U.S. government officials may claim about the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban know that they have won. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani reportedly said on Friday that the Taliban are pushing the narrative that the United States has been “defeated,” Fox News reporter Lucas Tomilson tweeted. (The Taliban later denied making such claims after this story was initially published.)

The National Directorate of Security (NDS), the Afghan spy agency, said on Saturday that it captured the Taliban’s shadow governor for Kabul. Identified as Mohammad, and popularly known as Haji Lala, he was involved in the recent wave of assassinations and kidnapping that have gripped the Afghan capital, a senior NDS official told The National.

At least 15 security forces members were killed and five others were wounded in a Taliban attack near the city of Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province. A suicide bomber drove a vehicle loaded with explosives into a base for Afghan defence forces in the country’s east on Saturday, killing at least 15 security personnel in an attack claimed by […]

Eight soldiers were killed as a car bomb went off next to a military base in Shirzad district of Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province on Saturday, said a statement of provincial government released here.

The Ministry of Defense says Afghan forces are patrolling along the highways regularly. Key routes in northern Afghanistan including the Baghlan-Kunduz and Baghlan-Balkh highways remain insecure for commuters, residents of the provinces said, adding that the Taliban has established checkpoints close to the government forces’ establishments in some areas.

The attack happened on an army outpost in the Gandumak area in Shirzad district of Nangarhar province. Eight security force members were killed in a car bomb explosion that targeted a civil order forces unit in Shirzad district of the eastern province of Nangarhar on Saturday morning, the provincial governor’s office confirmed.

A presidential aide has asked the Taliban to honour the commitments to peace before making fresh demands. Over the past two years, the government had taken a string of steps towards peace, Waheed Omer told reporters here on Saturday.

Three Taliban militants have been killed, five wounded and four others detained during security forces’ operations in northern Balkh and Samangan provinces, said the 209th Shaheen Military Corps on Sunday.

Suspected militants gunned down a religious scholar inside his home in southern Kandahar province on Sunday, police said.