Afghanistan's Taliban rulers say they have seized a strategic road junction from opposition forces in the northeast but have made a tactical retreat from a town they recaptured a week ago.
Taliban forces captured the Kalafgan junction in Takhar province early today and plan to move from there to a large opposition base nearby, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press(AIP) quoted a Taliban spokesman in Kabul as saying.
He said the Taliban had withdrawn from the vulnerable Yakawlang bazaar in a tactical move and set up a front line further east to face opposition attacks more effectively.
"We withdrew our forces...They have not taken it in fighting," Taliban Information Ministry spokesman Mr Abdul Anna Himat told Reutersin Kabul.
Mr Mohammad Habeel, spokesman for the northern-based opposition alliance, told Reutersthey had found Yakawlang, in the central province of Bamiyan, deserted.
He said the radical Islamic Taliban had razed the bazaar and houses belonging to ethnic Hazaras, known for supporting the opposition Hezb-i-Wahdat party representing minority Shi'ite Muslims. The Taliban spokesman denied the claim.
Yakawlang lies on a Taliban supply line and has changed hands at least six times this year. The Taliban deny a U.N. charge that they massacred about 170 Hazaras in the area in January.
The warring sides reported an intensification of fighting in southern and eastern areas of Takhar province, close to Tajikistan's border and adjacent to the northeastern Badakhshan province, the political heartland of forces led by main opposition commander Mr Ahmad Shah Masood.
AIPsaid the Taliban forces' capture of Kalafgan could pose a further danger to the opposition alliance as from there they could threaten the main opposition base in Takhar, at Farkhar, and also advance to Badakhshan, the only province of 31 in Afghanistan still completely under opposition control.
An opposition commander, Mr Bismillah Khan, said Taliban forces were preparing to launch an attack against opposition bunkers north of Kabul in an area that gives access to Mr Masood's native bastion of the Panjsher valley.
"We can see a lot of troop movements there. They are preparing to stage the attack and now the situation resembles the calm before the storm," he said.