KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghanistan's Taliban fighters have recaptured a key northern district lost to opposition forces at the weekend amid an intensification of fighting between the Taliban government and its opponents.The whole of Zari district, about 60 miles to the south of the strategic northern city, Mazar-i-Sharif, had fallen to the Taliban, said Abdul Hanan Himat, a Taliban Information Ministry spokesman. (Map)
``The opposition are trying their luck by fighting here and there to revive their lost morale,'' he said. ``This morning, we showed them morale can be short-lived.''
He said 10 opposition fighters were killed in the Taliban counter offensive, which began just after dawn.
An opposition spokesman confirmed the report.
Earlier, the top commander in the area -- General Abdul Rashid Dostum -- told reporters by satellite telephone that fighting was raging between his men and Taliban forces in Balkh province, most of it around Zari.
Dostum, longtime military leader of Afghanistan's minority Uzbek community who drove the Taliban from Zari at the weekend, said the Taliban had staged a counterattack to block further advances by the opposition toward Mazar-i-Sharif, which lies along the main route to the Uzbekistan border.
The Taliban's Himat said Qaris district in the northwestern province of Badghis was had also been recaptured from opposition fighters led by deposed president Burhanuddin Rabbani.
The opposition holds less than three provinces to the north of Kabul -- mostly isolated pockets in the center and northern regions -- and less than 10 percent of the whole country.
But these areas have been the scene of heavy fighting since the United States threatened to attack Afghanistan in pursuit of Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden and his Taliban protectors.
The U.S. blames bin Laden for the devastating September 11 suicide attacks on New York and Washington and has vowed to hunt him down and wipe out his militant network.
The opposition Northern Alliance has stepped up its attacks on the purist Islamic movement, emboldened by the growing Taliban isolation and angered by the assassination by suicide bombers earlier this month of their commander, Ahmad Shah Masood.