The militants have ramped up violence against Afghan security forces in recent days, ending a partial truce put in place during the run-up to a landmark US-Taliban withdrawal deal signed in Doha on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cTaliban fighters attacked at least three army outposts in Imam Sahib district of Kunduz last night, killing at least 10 soldiers and four police,\u201d said Safiullah Amiri, a member of the provincial council.<\/p>\n
A defence ministry official speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity confirmed the army toll while the provincial police spokesman Hejratullah Akbari confirmed the police fatalities.<\/p>\n
The insurgents also attacked police in central Uruzgan province Tuesday night, with the governor\u2019s spokesman Zergai Ebadi telling AFP: \u201cUnfortunately, six police were killed and seven wounded.\u201d<\/p>\n
The violence has cast a pall on the nascent Afghan peace process, with the insurgents clashing with Kabul over a prisoner exchange dispute ahead of talks that are due to begin on March 10.<\/p>\n
But on Tuesday, Trump told reporters in Washington that he had a \u201cvery good\u201d relationship with Taliban political chief Mullah Baradar, with the pair speaking on the phone for 35 minutes, according to the insurgents.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe relationship is very good that I have with the mullah. We had a good long conversation today and you know, they want to cease the violence, they\u2019d like to cease violence also,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Trump has touted the Doha deal as a way to end the bloody, 18-year US military presence in Afghanistan \u2014 right in time for his November reelection bid.<\/p>\n
Under the terms of the deal, US and other foreign forces will quit Afghanistan within 14 months, subject to Taliban security guarantees and a pledge by the insurgents to hold talks with the national government in Kabul.<\/p>\n
The agreement also includes a commitment to exchange 5,000 Taliban prisoners held by the Afghan government in return for 1,000 captives \u2014 something the militants have cited as a prerequisite for talks but which President Ashraf Ghani has refused to do before negotiations start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The militants have ramped up violence against Afghan security forces in recent days, ending a partial truce put in place during the run-up to a landmark US-Taliban withdrawal deal signed in Doha on Saturday. \u201cTaliban fighters attacked at least three army outposts in Imam Sahib district of Kunduz last night, killing at least 10 soldiers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13601,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2297,2299],"tags":[2526,2361,2527],"class_list":["post-13599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-world","tag-taliban","tag-trump","tag-usa-army"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13599"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13602,"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13599\/revisions\/13602"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}