30 Cases of Violence Against Journalists in 3 Months in Afghanistan, Says Watchdog

However, the families of the eight victims had said that the Taliban later accepted that the eight victims were innocent.

The Taliban had also said last Friday that the group members had killed the victims due to a misunderstanding.

However, officially the Taliban spokespersons had claimed at that time that the victims were members of ISIS and were killed in a gunfight with members of the group.

Two days later, on Friday, the families of these victims protested against the killing of their relatives in Kabul. These families said that their children were civilians and had traveled to Mazar-e-Sharif for a construction project.

Ten days after the last killing in Mazar-e-Sharif city, on Friday night, local sources from Mazar-e-Sharif reported that gunshots were heard in the city again.

On Saturday morning, Mohammad Asif Waziri, the spokesman of the Taliban police command in Mazar-e-Sharif, announced that the forces of this group killed five people on the charges of "rebellion" during an operation on Friday night.

There is still no exact information about the identity of the victims.

After the takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, independent human rights groups do not have ground presence inside the country.

The UN offices, including United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), focuses on the distribution of humanitarian aid and publishes few reports on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan.

Human rights organisations have previously asked the United Nations to form a fact-finding commission about gross violations of human rights in Afghanistan. However, this UN Security Council has only appointed a special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Afghanistan.

Mujahid added that a Taliban member has been wounded.

The exact number of casualties during the operation has not been revealed yet.

Earlier on Friday night, local sources in Mazar-e-Sharif city had reported that heavy gun fight was underway in Dasht-e-Shor area of the city.

The Taliban’s operations in civilian areas have been controversial in the past.

A week ago, the group announced killing seven young men on charges of rebellion and kidnapping in Mazar-e-Sharif city and displayed their bodies to the public. However, the families of these dead men said that they were innocent and were workers who had visited Mazar-e-Sharif for employment purposes.

These families staged a protest in front of the United Nations offices in Kabul to seek justice for their dead men by the Taliban, but the group prevented the protest.

The Indian official emphasised that New Delhi’s position in relation to the Taliban has not changed.

According to a letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Taliban, which was obtained by Afghanistan International, the Ministry of External Affairs of India had scheduled to hold a short-term online training course for the employees of the Ministry from March 14 to 17.

Bagchi described the purpose of this online training course to help build capacity in different countries, including Afghanistan.

He said, “These scholarship courses are open to nationals of various countries, including those from Afghanistan, and I think a number of Afghan nationals both based in India as well as in Afghanistan have been participating in these ITEC courses. Of course, the online courses do not involve travel to India.”

The spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs of India, who tried to downplay the political importance of this training course, said that these courses should not be considered as a change in the position of the Indian government regarding the Taliban.

He said, "Our position on how we see developments in Afghanistan has not changed… We certainly would not be issuing note verbales, which are intergovernmental notes to, you know, entities that are not recognised.”

During the session, the permanent representatives of Japan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the United Nations, said that the resolution to form an assessment team for Afghanistan had been proposed at the request of women activists in Afghanistan, as well as Afghan women activists who had participated in the meeting of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

The members of the assessment team for Afghanistan will be determined by the UN.

The assessment team will advise the international community to adopt an integrated approach on Afghanistan.

The meeting of the UN Security Council was held on Thursday and the member states approved the resolutions of the Council on Afghanistan with an overall majority.

According to the assessment of the US General who addressed the US senate on Thursday, ISIS will not be able to carry out terrorist attacks on American soil in the near future. However, he said that hundreds of American citizens abroad are vulnerable to attacks by the group.

American civil and military officials said after leaving Afghanistan that the United States has the ability to conduct over the horizon operations in Afghanistan.

However, General Kurilla warned about the widening presence of ISIS in Afghanistan and admitted that after the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan, the US forces have rarely conducted operations against terrorists in Afghanistan.

In the US Senate Armed Forces Committee, the US General admitted that the intelligence capability of Washington in Afghanistan has decreased drastically after the withdrawal of the country’s troops in August 2021. However, he expressed hope that by investing in increasing the power of high-altitude surveillance technologies, such as drones that can monitor areas for days and weeks, this intelligence gap can be filled.

"Right now, 80 percent of my time is spent on gathering information from high altitudes in the region," he said.