Taliban kill eight NRF men in Mazar-i-Sharif

MAZAR-I-SHARIF: The Taliban killed eight resistance fighters from a national opposition group in a firefight in the north of Afghanistan, police said on Friday.Since storming back to power in August, the Taliban have flatly denied facing organised resistance, but the gunbattle on Thursday night may demonstrate that armed opposition is building against their hardline rule.

Fighters from the National Resistance Front (NRF), a group led by the son of late anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, fought Taliban forces in Balkh province. Eight NRF fighters were killed in a "direct clash" with Taliban, provincial police spokesman Asif Waziri told reporters. Waziri said Taliban forces also seized ammunition and machine guns from the NRF fighters.

The fighting comes less than two weeks after Taliban foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi held talks with Ahmad Massoud, the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, in Tehran. After that summit, an official for the resistance faction said the NRF and Taliban remained on "separate pages" with no prospect of reconciliation.

Massoud's NRF forces were the last to hold out against the Taliban takeover last year, retreating to the Panjshir Valley which fell in September, weeks after government troops capitulated. The Panjshir Valley is famed as the site of resistance to Soviet forces in the 1980s and the Taliban in the late 1990s, during their first stint in power.Its most revered figure is Ahmad Shah Massoud, known as the "Lion of Panjshir", who was assassinated by Al-Qaeda in 2001, two days before the 9/11 attacks. His son has since picked up the mantle and there have been reports of his efforts to organise a resistance with other exiled Afghan leaders, which Taliban authorities had so far denied.

The Taliban have also faced resistance from the regional chapter of Islamic State, IS-Khorasan, an extremist group which aims to create a global caliphate.