Afghan military counter-attacks Taliban in northern province

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, June 21 (UPI) -- Afghanistan's military is counter-attacking Taliban positions after the militants recently overran a district in the country's northern Kunduz province, according to reports.

Officials say Taliban forces took the Chardara district after hours of fighting that left 12 soldiers dead and 17 wounded. The strategic district holds a road leading to Kabul, Afghanistan's capital.

The Afghan government says it believes Islamic State militants are fighting alongside the Taliban, according to the BBC. It also says it took from Taliban forces the Yumgan district in Badakshan province.

Taliban attacks have increased since a majority of NATO forces left Afghanistan last year.

Last week the militants claimed to have killed up to 25 police officers in raids against checkpoints -- some manned by two to three officers -- in remote areas of Helmand province, in the country's south.

Afghan and Taliban leaders met earlier this month for informal talks in Norway, three days after gunmen broke into an aid agency compound in Balkh province, just west of Kunduz province, and killed nine local humanitarian workers.

Last month, four Taliban fighters died attacking a guesthouse in a diplomatic neighborhood of Kabul, and the group claimed credit for a suicide bombing two days prior that killed five people and injured nearly 70 in Zabul province, to the south.

After U.S. President Barack Obama announced plans for U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2011, coalition forces officially handed the security operation to Afghan forces in December 2014.

The president's original timetable called for a reduction of U.S. troops in the country to 5,500 by the end of 2015, but in late March Obama announced the U.S. force would maintain its current posture of nearly 10,000 troops, used for advising and assisting Afghan forces, until the end of the year.

According to U.S. and Afghan officials, about 330 Afghan soldiers and police are killed or wounded each week in Taliban attacks, and the level of casualties among those forces in the first 15 weeks of 2015 is 70 percent higher than it was during the same period last year.