Opposition forces in northern Afghanistan claimed Sunday to have captured a strategic district from the Taliban militia, as the threat of US military strikes on the country loomed ever larger.
Abdul Rashid Dostam, one of the most powerful warlords in the anti-Taliban opposition, said his forces had ousted the Taliban from Zaare district, near Mazar-i-Sharif, capital of Balkh province.
"Zaare is very important because it's on the main highway linking the provinces of Balkh, Jozjan and Samangan," said Dostam, who was speaking to AFP from the frontline in Balkh, near the border with Uzbekistan.
But Taliban officials said they had recaptured the district after two days of heavy clashes.
"This afternoon we recaptured Zaare," a senior Taliban information ministry official told AFP.
"We had lost some part of Zaare in the course of last night and this morning's fighting, but we recaptured all the areas we had lost."
Neither side’s claims could be independently confirmed as the remote region is off-limits to journalists.
Dostam said more than 60 Taliban soldiers had been killed in the offensive and a large quantity of arms and ammunition had been seized.
He also said opposition forces captured the Safid pass near Dara-e-Souf in neighboring Samangan province.
Control of transport links is crucial to the civil war in Afghanistan, where usable roads are few and far between.
Fighting has intensified in northern Afghanistan in recent days, with the opposition seemingly emboldened by the prospect of US military strikes on the Taliban, which they have pledged to support.
The hard-line Islamic militia have repeatedly rejected Washington's demands to hand over Osama bin Laden -- chief suspect in the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
US surveillance planes and attack helicopters are already in position at an air base outside the Uzbek capital Tashkent in preparation of an attack on the Taliban, sources in Uzbekistan said.
Dostam, of Afghanistan's ethnic Uzbek minority, has launched a series of attacks in his traditional heartland since the death earlier this month of senior opposition commander Ahmad Shah Masood -- KABUL (AFP)
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