Two EU Citizens Go Missing in Eastern Afghanistan

The Taliban had announced on Saturday that in an operation, they had killed six IS-K members in district 14 of Herat city.

The Taliban police command in Herat province said that a woman had been killed and another IS-K member had been injured in the operation.

The Taliban has always denied the presence and activities of IS-K in Afghanistan, but from time to time the group launches operations in different parts of Afghanistan and claims to kill IS-K members.

This is while over the past 18 months since the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, IS-K has carried out deadly attacks in Afghanistan.

The international community has also repeatedly said that Afghanistan has become a haven for international terrorists.

The Taliban dispersed the girls and asked them to leave the vicinity of the university.

The girls had been students at Kabul University who have been banned from higher education by the Taliban in late 2022.

These female students have said that the university is closed to them, but they have come to study outside the university.

The symbolic protest of these Afghan girls happened on the first day of the reopening of universities for boys in Afghanistan.

According to the decision of the Ministry of Higher Education of the Taliban, on Monday, the university classes started for male students, but the ministry has not announced any change in their decision about allowing education for female students.

The Taliban announced in August 2022 that Afghan female students were not allowed to go to university until further notice.

The Taliban’s decision to ban higher education for girls has been met with widespread protests by male and female students and criticisms from international organisations.

Expressing gratitude to Iran, the Taliban said that "such positive steps" will strengthen the cooperation between the two countries.

The Taliban have not provided any details about the identity and charges pressed against these prisoners and there is no clear figure on how many Afghans have been imprisoned in Iran.

After the Afghan embassy in Tehran has been handed over to the Taliban, several Afghan citizens who fled to Iran out of fear of the Taliban are worried about their safety.

Some of them have said that the Taliban may now easily be able to track them inside Iran.

After the fall of the previous government, according to Iranian officials, more than one million Afghan citizens have immigrated to Iran.

He criticised those who stressed on accepting and tolerating the Taliban as a reality of Afghanistan. Atmar said, "Accepting the Taliban will not lead to peace and stability." According to him, depriving the people of freedom and basic rights will destabilise the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

The former foreign minister of Afghanistan was speaking at the German Institute of Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin. He tried to highlight "intra-Afghan dialogues" as the way forward for the stabilisation of Afghanistan and addressing the security and humanitarian crises in the country.

Atmar called the armed resistance against the Taliban an "extreme view". He added that “an extreme view is war and the use of force against the Taliban until their complete defeat. This view is wrong.” According to the former foreign minister of Afghanistan, Afghans experienced the war over the last two decades and that didn’t produce the end result that they had envisioned.

Unlike other Afghan politicians that criticised the Doha agreement, he optimistically said that the agreement has provided the necessary legal framework to start a dialogue between the Taliban and other Afghan political groups.

Atmar did not mention that the Taliban has no intention to hold dialogue with important political actors of Afghanistan.

The Taliban has urged other Afghan groups to accept their reign of Afghanistan and has severely restricted and surveyed politicians such as Hamid Karzai and Dr Abdullah Abdullah, who currently reside inside Afghanistan.

The former foreign minister emphasised that the legitimacy of the government is not possible without democracy and respect for the basic rights of the people, therefore, a new government must be formed in Afghanistan with the presence of the Taliban.

The Taliban said that a member of this group had been injured during the operation against the IS-K fighters.

This Taliban-controlled news agency said that three Kalashnikovs, five rifles, a camera, and fifteen mobile phone devices have been obtained in the operation.

Meanwhile, on Friday evening, local sources reported explosions heard in Herat city. No further details were revealed about the explosion.