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Taliban Launch 'Massive Attack' on Afghan City of Kunduz

Associated Press

   KABUL - The Taliban have launched a new large-scale attack on one of
   Afghanistan's main cities, Kunduz, and taken hospital patients as
   hostages, the government said Saturday, even as the insurgent group
   continued negotiations with the United States on ending America's
   longest war.

   The militants, who have demanded that all foreign forces leave
   Afghanistan, now control or hold sway over roughly half of the country
   and are at their strongest since their 2001 defeat by a U.S.-led
   invasion. Such attacks are seen as strengthening their negotiating
   position.

   Presidential spokesman Sediq Seddiqi said Afghan security forces were
   repelling the attack in parts of Kunduz, a strategic crossroads with
   easy access to much of northern Afghanistan as well as the capital,
   Kabul, 335 kilometers (about 200 miles) away.

   Seddiqi told reporters that the assault was "completely against the
   peace talks" and asserted that the militants were sheltering among
   civilians.

   The Taliban were in control of the hospital in Kunduz and both sides in
   the fighting had casualties, provincial council member Ghulam Rabani
   Rabani told The Associated Press. He could not give an exact number.

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