At least six Daesh members were killed in a clash against the Taliban in Nahr-e-Shahi district in Balkh on Monday night, said Asif Waziri, spokesman for Taliban police in Balkh.
No one was harmed among the Taliban in the clash, Waziri said.
Meanwhile, a Taliban police spokesman in Nimroz Gul Mohammad Qudrat said their forces raided a Daesh hideout in Zaranj city, engaging in several hours of a gunbattle with ISKP fighters.
Casualties were inflicted on both sides, sources confirmed.
Despite the Taliban’s repeated denials of IS-K (Daesh) existence in Afghanistan, the group has clashed with the ISIS-affiliate at least eight times over a 23-day period – between March 3 and March 26 this year.
Both sides have suffered casualties in these clashes, yet the Taliban deny their existence and blame the US for exaggerating the issue.
However, data gathered from Taliban-run Twitter accounts show that the group has carried out at least eight attacks on Daesh hideouts in Kabul, Herat, and Balkh provinces in the past few weeks.
In addition, IS-K carried out seven attacks on the Taliban.
On March 9, a suicide bomber killed Mohammad Daud Muzammil, the Taliban’s governor for Balkh province, in Mazar-e-Sharif, the provincial capital. In a reprisal attack, the Taliban on Sunday claimed that they killed three key ISIS leaders – including Shadow governor for Khorasan Mawlawi Ziauddin; IS-K member Abu Omar Afridi; and a military trainer and bomb-making expert Salman Tajikistani – during a raid in Mazar-e-Sharif.
