Anti-Taliban fighters from Afghanistan's Panjshir province have vowed to fight the outfit, saying "We are going to rub their faces in the ground," local media reported.
"We are going to rub their faces in the ground," one fighter declared from a vantage point on the Panjshir heights, citing previous triumphs over the Taliban. To this other soldiers raised their hands and chanted, "Allah O Akbar", Afghanistan's Khaama Press said on Wednesday.
For a long time, fighters in Panjshir have prevented the capture of the region from foreign forces by firing a heavy machine gun into a deep valley from the top of the rocky mountain.
These fighters are from the National Resistance Front (NRF), the remaining strongest force after the siege of Kabul by the Taliban.
The valley lies in the Hindu Kush mountains, approximately 90 miles north of Kabul. The Taliban have been unable to take this major holdout of resistance after steamrolling across pro-government troops in a matter of months.
In an attempt to prevent a Taliban attack on their bastion, NRF has put up machine gun nests, mortars, and monitoring stations protected with sandbags, Afghanistan's Khaama Press said.
NRF fighters patrol the region with US-made Humvees and pick up trucks with machine weapons mounted on the back - many of them are dressed in military fatigues.
The Taliban forces are reportedly facing a challenge from local resistance forces in the Panjshir valley led by Ahmad Massoud, son of renowned anti-Taliban figure Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Earlier, a former Russian emergency official told Sputnik in an interview that resistance fighters in the Panjshir Valley in northern Afghanistan stand a chance of defending this strategic location against the Taliban.
"It does provide a solid foothold. You can send humanitarian aid there and give (the resistance) some medical support. It can naturally serve as a strong point that ex-government forces could defend," Yuri Brazhnikov, who led Russian humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan from 2001-2002, said.
( With inputs from ANI )
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