Taliban Foreign, Defense Ministers Discuss Bilateral Cooperation With China's Envoy

Taliban and Iranian authorities have not commented on the issue so far.

If confirmed by officials, this is the second Iranian soldier to be killed by the Taliban since the group took control of Afghanistan.

Previously according to Afghanistan International's sources from Nimroz province, a Taliban fighter had shot at Iranian border guards, one of whom was killed.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran, then, responded by asking the Taliban to identify and punish the perpetrators of the attack.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran had stressed that "the incidents on the border between Iran and Afghanistan happened as of result of the lack of attention and understanding of Afghan border guards about the border lines of the two countries".

According to Mujahid, based on the Doha agreement, the intelligence had to be shared with the Taliban.

In an interview with Afghanistan's National Television station, Mujahid said that the United States intelligence operation about Ayman al- Zawahiri, the leader of Al-Qaeda was a violation of the Doha Agreement.

The Taliban spokesperson further claimed that the US drone strike in Kabul had been conducted with powerful substances which eliminated everything with “no traces left at the scene”.

However, in an interview with National Public Radio (NPR), US National Security Adviser Jack Sullivan said that the US is aware that senior members of the Haqqani network, part of the Taliban government in Kabul, had knowledge of al-Zawahiri's presence.

Meanwhile, according to media reports, al-Zawahiri was staying at the house of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban's interior minister. Haqqani held meetings with the leader of al-Qaeda at his residence, but he was not there on the day of the US drone strike.

It has been reported that a couple of relatives of the Taliban's interior minister had also been killed in the drone strike on al-Zawahiri's safe house in Kabul.

According to AI sources, Ariana airlines’ senior management have "verbally" told the female attendants that they are no longer needed in their roles.

However, the Taliban have always denied firing female employees of the government.

Female employees of the airlines were allowed to work, fully dressed briefly under the Taliban. But, in the past five months, they are only required to sign attendance twice a month and receive 5,000 Afghanis as a monthly allowance.

With these flight attendants now forced to stay at home, female passengers on Ariana flights can receive no help, especially, in emergency situations.

Ariana is not the first state-run organisation where female employees have been forcibly removed from work by the Taliban. Previously, the Taliban had asked female employees of the Ministry of Finance to be replaced with male family members.

While noting that this massacre should be recognized as a genocide, Nazary has warned that the people of Afghanistan are once again facing a similar situation under the Taliban reign in Afghanistan.

After entering Mazar-e-Sharif city in northern Balkh province on August 8, 1998, the Taliban killed many civilians, particularly those belonging to the Hazara ethnicity.

In their report about the massacre, human rights organisations too said that the Taliban "killed thousands of civilians" by recapturing the city of Mazar-e-Sharif in 1998.

Human Rights Watch had said in a report that the massacre at Mazar-e-Sharif by the Taliban was in "revenge" for the killing of 2,000 members of this group's forces in 1997, who had been killed after capturing the cities of Mazar-e-Sharif and Shaberghan.

The Taliban have also been accused of shooting eight Iranian diplomats and a journalist after entering the Iranian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif, on the same day. However, the group has never taken responsibility for that incident.

Some Iranian social media users remembered Mahmoud Saremi, an Iranian journalist who was killed on this day. Asma Qaidizada wrote on Facebook, "Today is the anniversary of the killing of a journalist and eight Iranian diplomats in a brutal Taliban attack on the Iranian Consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif.”

Asma criticised the statement published by the Iran's Foreign Ministry on this occasion and said that in this announcement, the Taliban as a group had been not condemned, and the perpetrators of this terrorist attack were mentioned as anonymous.

On August 8, Iran's Foreign Ministry had issued a statement calling for the clarification regarding the killing of its diplomats in Mazar-e-Sharif and various aspects of this attack.

Haqqani, who is currently in Helmand to meet local Taliban officials, met with the group’s fighters who had been injured or disabled during the Taliban insurgency against the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and international forces.

It has been reported that Haqqani left Kabul after the US drone strike on the al-Qaeda leader's residence in Sherpur area of the capital city, last Sunday.

During the twenty years of Taliban’s insurgency against the international forces and the former government of Afghanistan, thousands of people have been injured, and many were left disabled.

The Taliban and the Haqqani network, along with other militant groups, have been one of the main causes of Afghans becoming disabled.

Taliban currently faces economic challenges and a crisis of legitimacy coupled with providing support and services to thousands of victims of the group's war in Afghanistan.

The group’s main challenge is meeting the expectations of those families who sent their children to the war front to fight against the former Afghan government and its international allies for the Taliban.