At least five soldiers have been killed in the latest outbreak of fighting between factions loyal to President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan's restive north, an official said today.
The fighting between forces of ethnic-Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum and the mostly ethnic-Tajik faction of Ustad Atta Mohammed broke out on Friday afternoon in Sar-i-Pul province. Three of the dead were Dostum loyalists while two were Atta's fighters, a faction official said.
"Fierce fighting is going on. We are engaged in heavy exchanges of fire," Malim Abdul Aziz, a commander from the Atta faction, told reporters.
Both Dostum and Atta are senior members of Mr Karzai's government, which was installed after U.S.-led forces overthrew the radical Taliban regime in late 2001. Despite being top government officials, the commanders both run their own armies of thousands of fighters.
Clashes between their forces over territory in the north, and attacks by a resurgent Taliban in the south and east, have raised concern about the ability of Mr Karzai's Western-backed government to stamp its authority across the war-shattered country.
Last month dozens of people were killed and wounded in intense fighting between the factions around the main northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
Mr Karzai later decided to remove Atta and Dostum from the north and give them positions in Kabul. Aziz said Dostum's men started the latest fighting.
A Dostum deputy, General Abdul Majid Roozi, said he was not aware of the fighting but a Dostum commander had gone to the area where Aziz said the fighting had erupted "to visit his troops".
In a separate incident, three Afghan soldiers and two policemen were killed in an exchange of fire in Helmand province in the south.
A senior Helmand police officer said the clash began when police opened fire on military vehicles with tinted windows that had refused to stop for a routine check yesterday.