Taliban Militants Seize 80 Villages in Northern Afghanistan

Taliban insurgents occupied over 80 villages in northern Afghanistan, local officials said Tuesday, Sputnik reported. 

"The Taliban last night took control of as many as 80 villages and about 14 residents who are fighting the insurgents have been killed or injured so far," head of the provincial council of Kunduz Mohammad Yousuf Ayoubi said, quoted by the TOLO News television channel.

According to the media outlet, hundreds of families fled their homes in the attack on the Kunduz province.

Taliban militants attacked the Khan Abad district of the same province two days ago, clashing with local residents, according to the channel.

Afghanistan has been plagued by an ongoing Taliban insurgency beginning in the early 1990s. The militants have become notorious for staging attacks against civilian and state targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan, seeking to establish a fundamentalist sharia law on the territory under its control.