PESHAWAR:
An Afghan militant faction denied reports of shifting their loyalties to Islamic State ‘Daesh”s movement in the region, Monday.
Hizb e Islami spokesperson commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was reported to have claimed in a statement that he had thrown his support behind the ultra-hardline militant movement, however, Hekmatyar claimed that this statement had been false, and he had not claimed such a thing.
“It was not true. None of us had issued any such statement in support of ISIS in Afghanistan against the Afghan Taliban,” spokesperson Haroon Zarghoon said.
Any shift by Hekmatyar, believed to command the loyalty of fighters in Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar and Nuristan provinces, would boost Islamic State’s expansionist ambitions in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a rival to the main Taliban insurgency.