Taliban have said that their fighters are headed to anti-Taliban stronghold Panjshir Valley as the locals of the area are refusing to hand over the region peacefully.
The Taliban’s Alemarah Twitter feed said hundreds of fighters were heading towards Panjshir “after local state officials refused to hand it over peacefully”. The tweet came along with a 14-second video clip showing a column of captured trucks with the white Taliban flags moving along a highway.
Ahmad Massoud, leader of Afghanistan’s last major outpost of anti-Taliban resistance, on Sunday said that the Panjshir valley will not be handed over to the outfit and resistance fighters will be ready to fight back if the extremist group tries to seize.
However, the son of the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, one of the main leaders of Afghanistan’s anti-Soviet resistance in the 1980s said that the only way forward is through negotiations. “We want to make the Taliban realize that the only way forward is through negotiation. We do not want a war to break out,” he told Reuters by telephone from his stronghold in the Panjshir Valley northwest of Kabul.
(Inputs from Al Jazeera, Reuters, image credit Reuters)