KABUL, Sept 13 (Reuters) – The Taliban said on Tuesday they had killed 40 rebel force members, including four commanders, in the northern Afghan province of Panjshir.

The Taliban proclaimed victory over the province in September 2021, weeks after they took over the capital Kabul as foreign forces withdrew.

Resistance groups have since said they have been carrying out operations in the area and clashing with Taliban fighters.

The Taliban has in the past denied widespread fighting, saying they have established control of the entire country.

“Due to a clearance operation against rebels in Rekha, Dara and Afshar (areas) of Panjshir province, 40 have been killed including four commanders and 100 more have been arrested,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a Tweet on Tuesday.

The National Resistance Front, a group opposing the Taliban which has in the past claimed activity in the area, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Located just north of the capital Kabul, Panjshir is one of the smallest of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. It played a critical role in the resistance against Soviet occupation in the 1980s and was the centre of resistance against the Taliban when it ruled Afghanistan from to 1996 to 2001.

KABUL, Sept 12 (Reuters) – The United Nations’ Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) on Monday said three of its female Afghan employees had been temporarily detained by Taliban security agents and called on the group to stop intimidation of its local female staff.

Taliban spokesmen said they strongly rejected the allegations.

UNAMA said in a statement that the three women employed by the U.N. had been singled out by armed security agents and detained for questioning temporarily on Monday, but did not provide further details about the incident.

“The UN calls for an immediate end to all such acts of intimidation and harassment targeting its Afghan female staff, calling on the de facto authorities to reiterate and enforce explicit guarantees for the safety and security of all U.N. personnel operating in Afghanistan,” the U.N. mission (UNAMA) said in a statement.

“There has been an emerging pattern of harassment of Afghan U.N. female staff by the de facto authorities,” UNAMA said, referring to the Taliban administration.

Taliban deputy spokesman Bilal Karimi told Reuters the Taliban rejected allegations of harassment, saying the incident involved Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice officials in the southern city of Kandahar.

“They wanted to know about a gathering of women, but then they realised that the gathering was related to U.N. female workers, they left them alone,” he said.

Since the Taliban took over the country just over a year ago, no foreign capital has recognised the group’s government and strict sanctions have isolated Afghanistan financially.

That has left many countries without an embassy in Kabul and caused the international community to cut development aid, leaving the United Nations and other NGOs to deliver hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid that is aimed at meeting urgent needs.

The group has placed growing restrictions on women’s access to public life, closing girls’ high schools in most provinces and saying women should cover their faces in public and not travel long distances without a male guardian. read more

Figures from international organisations show women’s participation in the workforce has declined, though some women are still working outside the home.

DUBAI/WASHINGTON, Sept 8 (Reuters) – Canada will accept some 1,000 Afghans who fled the Taliban takeover of their homeland and have been held for months in a makeshift refugee centre in the United Arab Emirates awaiting resettlement to the United States and elsewhere, seven sources said.

Ottawa has agreed to a U.S. request to resettle some of the 5,000 Afghans still in Emirates Humanitarian City in Abu Dhabi, the sources said, and Canadian officials were now reviewing cases to identify those who meet Ottawa’s resettlement criteria.

It is the first known occasion of Afghans in the facility being resettled to a country to which they do not have direct ties with, such as by having worked with their government in Afghanistan.

Canada’s criteria for resettlement of those from the facility include religious minorities, single women, civil servants, social activists and journalists, the sources said.

Beyond the 1,000 people that Canada is taking at the request of the United States, Ottawa is also expected to take roughly a further 500 Afghans from the facility who do have ties to Canada, the sources said.

“It is happening,” said a U.S. source, who asked not to be further identified, confirming the Canadian resettlement operation expected to begin this month and end in October.

Asked about the arrangement, the Canadian embassy in Abu Dhabi shared an immigration department statement saying Ottawa’s priority was to support vulnerable Afghans getting to Canada.

Emirati authorities and the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi did not respond to requests for comment.

Mohammad, who said he was a legal adviser to U.S. government projects in Afghanistan, told Reuters from the facility that he had applied with his family for Canadian resettlement because the processing of their U.S. Special Immigration Visa applications has taken so long.

“Because of the delays, we decided to put our names on the list,” Mohammad said in a telephone interview on the condition that his last name be withheld. Like other Afghans there, he described the conditions in the facility as similar to “jail”.

“We have no freedom. We cannot go anywhere.”

Mohammad and his family are Hazaras, an ethnic minority that is overwhelmingly Shi’ite Muslim.

Canada’s decision to accept the Afghans brings the temporary refugee centre closer to closing, though sources said there was about another 1,000 who were not eligible to be relocated to the United States and would need resettlement elsewhere.

The UAE, a close security partner of the United States, last year agreed to temporarily house several thousand Afghans evacuated from Kabul as the Taliban ousted the U.S.-backed government during the final stages of the U.S.-led withdrawal.

More than 10,000 have since been relocated from the facility to the United States, while others were resettled to nations to which they had ties such as through working with their government in Afghanistan.

Protests have sporadically broken out at the facility, including last month, over what Afghans complain is a lack of communication and transparency of the resettlement process. There has been at least one suicide attempt, according to sources and Afghans in the centre.

The Canadian immigration department statement said Ottawa plans to resettle at least 40,000 vulnerable Afghans to Canada by 2024. More than 17,650 had been resettled, it added.

Like other Gulf states, the UAE is not a signatory to the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention and typically does not accept refugees. Foreign diplomats said some Afghans had rejected job offers in the UAE as there was no clear pathway to citizenship.

U.S. officials have said no one would be forcibly returned to Afghanistan and that Washington was working with the UAE and other nations to find “resettlement options” for those Afghans ineligible for resettlement in the United States.

The United States has so far taken in more than 85,000 Afghans since August 2021.