Gunmen shoot two Taliban, one civilian dead in Jalalabad attack

JALALABAD, AFGHANISTAN: Gunmen shot two Taliban fighters and a civilian in an armed attack at a check-post in Ghawchak district of Jalalabad,  sources within the security forces as well as witnesses said Wednesday.

The attack in Jalalabad city is the latest on Taliban targets in Nangarhar province, which for years was the main operating base of Daesh’s Afghanistan chapter.

A security source and witnesses said unidentified gunmen in a rickshaw attacked a checkpoint the eastern Afghanistan, Jalalabad, and killed two Taliban guards and a civilian bystander.

A Taliban official confirmed the attack but said the dead were all civilians.

In another incident, local residents told AFP that two Taliban fighters were injured while trying to defuse an improvised explosive device in Jalalabad.

Further details were not immediately available.

Daesh Khorasan, a local branch of the extremist group, claimed responsibility for several weekend attacks in Jalalabad that killed at least two people.

They were the first deadly blasts since the last US forces withdrew from Afghanistan on August 30.

Daesh-K also claimed responsibility for a bloody attack that killed more than 100 people at Kabul airport at the end of August.

Although both Daesh and the Taliban are militant groups, they differ on the issues of religion and strategy, which has led to bloody fighting between the two.