FAIZABAD (Dispatches) – Seven people including a female member of provincial council were injured as a blast rocked Faizabad city, capital of northern Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province on Saturday, provincial government spokesman Nik Mohammad Nazari said.
“The blast took place at 01:35 p.m. local time today in Faizabad city, injuring seven people including provincial council member Munira Alamyar,” Nazari told Xinhua.
Without providing more details, the official said that an investigation had been initiated into the incident.
Meanwhile, another member of Badakhshan’s provincial council, Farahnaz Pamirin, in contact with Xinhua confirmed the blast, saying Munira Alamyar along with her driver and another person sustained injury in the blast caused by a magnetic bomb.
No group has claimed responsibility yet.
The unrest comes a day after the Taliban overrun a key district not far from the Afghan capital, Kabul, following days of heavy fighting with the government forces.
Mahdi Rasikh, a district lawmaker, said clashes continued in Jalrez district of Maidan Wardak, southwest of Kabul, over the past three days.
The Taliban, he said Saturday, eventually managed to take over the police headquarters the day before.
Rasikh claimed that the central government had taken “no action” in dealing with the circumstances.
The Afghan Ministry of Defense said in a statement that Afghan forces had launched an operation to clear the district. It said at least ten members of the Taliban had been killed in the clashes.
The ministry did not comment on the reports of the district’s fall to the Taliban.
Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry says what is happening in Jalrez is “a tactical retreat” on the part of the government forces.
Citing a member of the provincial council, Turkey’s Anadolu news agency said Jalrez’s police chief had “surrendered to the Taliban along with 35 security forces.”
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed the group has seized the district administration compound as well as the police headquarters by inflicting “heavy casualties” on the government forces.
All foreign troops were supposed to have been withdrawn by May 1, as part of an agreement that the U.S. had reached with the Taliban in the Qatari capital, Doha, last year. But U.S. President Joe Biden last month pushed that date back to September 11.