Deadly Taliban attack probably used drone, a worrisome shift

A Taliban terrorist attack, most likely carried out by a drone, killed at least four security officers in northern Afghanistan on Sunday, according to senior and local Afghan officials, representing what could be the terrorist group’s first publicly known use of the method in the 19-year war.
The strike targeted the governor’s compound in Kunduz, a province that has seen heavy fighting, like much of the country, in recent months despite continuing peace talks between Taliban and Afghan government negotiators in Qatar. At least eight other people were wounded in the blast, local officials said.
“When the Kunduz governor bodyguards were playing volleyball in the governor’s guesthouse, the explosion took place among them,” said Ghulam Rabbani Rabbani, a member of Kunduz’s provincial council.
“It is not clear that it was an explosion or a missile or drone attack,” he added.
Fazal Karim Aimaq, a member of the Afghan Parliament from Kunduz, said on his Facebook page that the episode represented “a new method of attack” but did not say if a drone had carried it out.
A Taliban spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
The Taliban’s use of small, over-the-counter drones has been limited in recent years to filming attacks for propaganda and reconnaissance. But, according to U.S. officials, there have been previous unreported instances of the remote-controlled devices being used to drop munitions, a practice made popular by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in the past.
About 2,100 Afghan civilians were killed and 3,800 wounded in the first nine months of 2020, according to a United Nations report released Tuesday.