The Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) claimed on Sunday its forces killed ISKP second in command Malawi Ziauddin and two other senior commanders in night raids conducted ten days earlier in Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province.
The Taliban said recent investigations proved Mawlawi Ziauddin served as the ISKP’s governor and chief judge before his death. “He was the 2nd key leader in its Khorasan branch and also known as Mawlawi Mohammad,” the Taliban claimed.
The Taliban also said Abu Omar Afridi, an ISKP Council member, and Ustad Salman Tajikistani, a military and bomb-making specialist, were killed during the night raids.
On March 18, Mujahid claimed on his Twitter account that the Taliban forces conducted night raids on the ISKP hideouts in three separate districts of Mazar-e-Sharif the night before, killing “a number of them” and seizing their weapons.
Two days later, sources in the neighbouring Faryab province confirmed to KabulNow that the Taliban arrested three men, four women, and a number of children on charges of having the ISKP’s membership in its capital, Maymana.
At the time, local Taliban authorities, however, only confirmed arresting three people along with some magnetic bombs.
On Sunday, the Taliban’s intelligence agency said that all members of the ISKP who had plotted the attack which killed Taliban’s Balkh governor, Dawood Muzamel, have been arrested during that operation. This group had also conducted attacks in Faryab, Balkh, and Kabul provinces, the agency added.
“It has been proved that the attacker was a Tajikistani national who had been sent to Afghanistan to conduct the attack [on Muzamel],” the Taliban’s intelligence agency said about the attacker killed the group’s governor.
This comes amid increasing global concerns over the expanding ISKP presence in Afghanistan and Taliban’s repeated denial and downplaying of its presence in the country.
