ICRC Resuming Operations In Afghanistan After Taliban Lifts Ban On Organization - Official

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 28th September, 2019) The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is actively relaunching its activities in Afghanistan after the Taliban decided last week to revoke the ban on the organization and promised to provide its workers with guarantees of safety, Ikhtiyar Aslanov, the head of the ICRC Regional Delegation for the Russian Federation, Belarus and Moldova, told Sputnik on Friday.

"We will now progressively resume all of our humanitarian services for the victims of the conflict," Aslanov said.

Red Cross operations in Afghanistan include helping the wounded and taking them to hospitals, taking the bodies of those killed in battle to their families, reconnecting those in captivity with their relatives and providing the rural population with safe drinking water.

Afghanistan has long been suffering from an unstable security situation. The government has been fighting the Taliban for almost two decades, and the Islamic State terrorist group (outlawed in Russia), which has been operating in Afghanistan since 2015.