KABUL (AFP) – The Taleban have killed or wounded more than 400 Afghan security personnel over the past week, the Interior Ministry said on Sunday (June 14), accusing the insurgents of increasing attacks ahead of expected peace talks.

Violence had dropped across much of Afghanistan since the Taleban announced a three-day ceasefire on May 24 to mark the Eid al-Fitr holiday, but officials have accused the insurgents of stepping up attacks in recent days.

“In the past one week, the Taleban carried out 222 attacks against the Afghan security forces, resulting in the death and injury of 422” personnel, Interior Ministry spokesman Tareq Arian said at a press conference.

He also accused the Taleban of targeting religious scholars in a bid to put “psychological pressure” on the Afghan government.

Bomb attacks on Kabul mosques that killed two prayer leaders this month were the work of the insurgents, Mr Arian claimed.

“This has been the goal of the Taleban, to target religious scholars, especially in the past two weeks,” Mr Arian said, accusing the militants of being an “umbrella group for other terrorist networks”.

On Friday, four people including a prayer leader were killed when a blast ripped through a mosque in Kabul during weekly prayers.

No group claimed that assault, which came just over a week after an Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)-claimed attack at a mosque on the edge of Kabul’s heavily fortified Green Zone killed a prominent prayer leader.

The Taleban condemned both attacks.

After initially reporting a drop in overall violence following the ceasefire, National Security Council spokesman Javid Faisal on Sunday said the Taleban “have not reduced, but rather increased their attacks across the country”.

The council on Saturday also charged that the insurgents had killed 89 civilians and wounded 150 in the last two weeks.

TALEBAN REJECTS GOVERNMENT CLAIMS

Interior Minister Massoud Andrabi said both the Taleban and Afghan forces had honoured the ceasefire during Eid.

“But after Eid, the Taleban attacks slowly started rising to its previous recorded numbers as before Eid,” Mr Andrabi told AFP.

“The Taleban are now looking for any targets or opportunities to attack, kidnap and assassinate Afghan officials,” he said.

The Taleban is currently conducting more than 60 attacks every 24 hours, he said, adding that insurgent fighters were coming from areas in Waziristan and Balochistan in neighbouring Pakistan.

The Taleban acknowledged carrying out attacks against security forces, but insisted the level remained low.

“We have reduced our attacks to 35-40 per cent of what it used to be in the past,” the Taleban’s spokesman representing insurgent fighting forces, Zabihullah Mujahid, told AFP.

The Taleban have also not claimed launching any major attacks on Afghan cities since February, when they signed a deal with the US meant to pave the way for peace talks.

The latest government accusations come after Kabul and the Taleban signalled that they were getting closer to launching much delayed peace talks.

President Ashraf Ghani has vowed to complete a Taleban prisoner release that is a key condition to beginning the negotiations with the insurgents aimed at ending nearly two decades of war.

The authorities have already released about 3,000 Taleban prisoners, and plan to further free 2,000 as stipulated in the insurgents’ deal with US.

“Our position is that our remaining prisoners (2,000) should be released before the beginning of intra-Afghan negotiation,” the Taleban’s political spokesman Suhail Shaheen said.

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