World should not remain indifferent to humanitarian crises in Afghanistan, says Abdullah Abdullah

Kabul [Afghanistan] August 11 (ANI): Afghanistan’s Chairman of High Council for National Reconciliation (HCNR) Abdullah Abdullah on Tuesday said that the world should not remain indifferent to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the country and must send a clear message to Taliban to end the violence.

The Afghan leader said this during his address at a three-day international Afghan peace conference in the Qatari capital, Doha in which he addressed representatives of the Troika plus comprising the US, China, Pakistan, Russia, the UK, Uzbekistan, Qatar, the UN, and the EU, the Khaama Press reported.

“The Taliban are pleading the release of their remaining prisoners while the same move did not contribute to peace and bringing the war to an end when the Afghan government freed the group’s five thousand detainees,” Abdullah said. The leader also warned the participants present in the meeting that if not stopped now then the ongoing atrocities will also harm them as other terror groups are also fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan, The Khaama Press reported.

Meanwhile, over 439 Taliban terrorists were killed and 77 injured by Afghan security forces in the last 24 hours. Amid escalating violence in the northern part of the country, Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani on Wednesday arrived in Mazar-e-Sharif city in the Balkh province. This visit comes as the Taliban has captured several provincial capitals in Afghanistan.

Amid the ongoing fight between Afghan government forces and Taliban, hundreds of thousands of civilians are at risk as fighting intensifies in and around Kunduz, Lashkar Gah, Kandahar, and other Afghan cities. Meanwhile, the US is concerned that the Taliban could capture Kabul in one to three months, far sooner than previous intelligence assessments suggested.

According to the Washington Post, the situation in the war-torn country is now worse than it was in June when the US intelligence predicted that Kabul could collapse in 6-12 months after the American troop pullout from Afghanistan. (ANI)