Media caption The BBC's Justin Rowlatt says the battle for Kunduz has "not yet been won" 
 
 Explosions and gunfire have been reported as Afghan government forces try to extend their control over the northern city of Kunduz, which was seized by Taliban fighters this week. 
 
 On Thursday afternoon, the Taliban took back the main square and raised their flag there once again. 
 
 Government forces are now said to control much of the city, but remnants of the Taliban have been fighting back. 
 
 Kunduz was the first major urban centre to fall to the Taliban in 14 years. 
 
 Street battles took place all day on Thursday as government forces pushed back the insurgents who seized the city on Monday. 
 
 Many Taliban fighters have now retreated to the outskirts of Kunduz. 
 
 The BBC's Justin Rowlatt says the battle for the city is far from over, with government forces based in the airport still meeting resistance from the Taliban nearby. 
 
 An Afghan interior ministry spokesman, Sediq Sediqqi, told the AFP news agency that the government now controlled the city. 
 
 "The clearance operation will take some time as Taliban remnants are firing from inside civilian houses and booby traps have been planted in places," he said. 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Afghan security forces launched a counter-offensive early on Thursday morning 
 
 The Taliban has denied the city has been retaken. 
 
 The city's capture on Monday by the militant group was a huge blow to President Ashraf Ghani, coming on the first anniversary of his taking power. 
 
 Praising the work of Afghan forces on Thursday, the president said he hoped that they had "proved to the people of Afghanistan, to the region and to the world that they have the ability and resolve to fight". 
 
 A doctor at the hospital in Kunduz told the BBC that they were struggling to cope with the high number of injured people coming in. 
 
 Image copyright EPA Image caption Many residents have already left Kunduz 
 
 Image copyright EPA Image caption Kunduz is a strategically important city of 300,000 people 
 
 A businessman living near Traffic Square in the city centre described the situation as "very, very tense" and said the fighting was still going on as darkness fell on Thursday evening. 
 
 Kunduz, with a population of around 300,000, is one of Afghanistan's largest cities and strategically important both as a transport hub and a bread-basket for the region. 
 
 The government assault - backed by Nato special forces and US air support - began in the early hours of Thursday, with fighters infiltrating the city and launching a series of simultaneous attacks from different positions. 
 
 Government officials said on Thursday morning that the military had taken back key offices and as many as 200 Taliban fighters had been killed in the operation. Some residents spoke of seeing dead bodies of Taliban fighters everywhere. 
 
 Interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said an operation to "clear the city" of the last pockets of resistance was ongoing and could take some days. 
 
 There were scenes of jubilation at dawn on Thursday as residents emerged from their homes to thank government troops after three days of crippling food shortages. 
 
 But the mood changed during the morning as fighting broke out again. 
 
 Taliban fighters had scattered into groups of 10 and 12 and were firing at government troops "from inside people's houses and from the top of high-rise buildings," said Samad Ahmadi, a university lecturer, taking shelter on the outskirts of the city. 
 
 A doctor with Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) in Kunduz, Heman Nagarathnam, told the BBC that 296 people wounded in the fighting had been treated at the MSF trauma centre since Monday. Sixty-eight of those treated were children, he said. 
 
 Image copyright EPA Image caption Afghan security forces drive in to Kunduz on Thursday 
 
 Image copyright EPA Image caption Reinforcements arrived from as far away as Kabul earlier in the week to help with the counter-offensive 
 
 The Taliban launched its assault on Kunduz from multiple directions on Monday night, helped by infiltrators who had entered the city during the recent Eid festival. The assault was swift and took Afghan forces by surprise. 
 
 The city's capture is a setback for a government under pressure to show it can keep the country secure without the backing of international forces. 
 
 Jawed Ludin, the former deputy foreign minister of Afghanistan, told the BBC's Today programme that Kunduz was known to be at risk from terror attacks and the government should have done "a better job" at protecting the city. 
 
 Afghanistan's chief executive officer Abdullah Abdullah admitted the government must address its "shortcomings" over Kunduz. 
 
 Militant violence has increased across Afghanistan since Nato ended its combat mission there in December 2014, leaving a residual force used for training and counter-terrorism operations. Most of that force is made up of US troops and there are fears Washington plans to pull most of them out in the coming year. 
 
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 Naseeb, a resident of Kunduz, said that on Thursday that he saw an ambulance full of carpets “probably stolen” headed out of the city. “I had a closer look of the ambulance and it was shocking to see that it was the Taliban driving,” Naseeb said, adding that it was the first time in four days he had seen them participating in looting that had grown increasingly common. 
 
 Another resident, Ahmad Khalid, said that before fleeing Kunduz on Thursday, he saw Taliban fighters huddled around a car. They were trying to steal it, which Mr. Khalid learned when one of the fighters called him over and asked him for help hot-wiring it. “I was afraid, but I went over and I tried, but couldn’t start it,” he recalled. 
 
 One of the Taliban’s first edicts for Kunduz, posted to its English-language website and clearly intended for a wider audience, called for all workers of nongovernmental organizations to continue working normally. Any worker facing problems was instructed to contact the Taliban’s “Commission for Control and Administration of NGOs and Companies of the Islamic Emirate.” 
 
 Yet NGO workers are having their “houses looted and burned,” according to a researcher with Amnesty International, Horia Mosadiq, who has been contacting people in Kunduz. 
 
 Ms. Sarwari, the coordinator a shelter run by the group Women for Afghan Women, had been on the road out of Kunduz for just a few hours on Tuesday when she received the chilling call from the Taliban’s new virtue minister in Kunduz. A day later, she heard that the Taliban had continued their search within the city. 
 
 Insurgent fighters had gone to the home of one of her colleagues, the caretaker at a safe house for runaway women, Ms. Sarwari said. Although the caretaker was not home, having already gone into hiding, the Taliban still exacted punishment: They gunned down the caretaker’s husband, then abducted her 20-year-old son, Ms. Sarwari said. Ms. Sarwari said she had heard of numerous other killings in that same neighborhood, Sare Dawra. 
 
 Later in the week, the Taliban’s plans for Kunduz seemed to shift toward recruiting new fighters. Mr. Khalid said that when he left his home to see what was happening, he saw a Taliban militant with pen and paper exhorting young men to “to come and fight the infidels and puppet regime.” 

 FILE - In this Monday, Sept. 28, 2015 file photo, Taliban prisoners walk on a street after their comrades released them from the main jail in Kunduz, north of Kabul, Afghanistan. The Taliban captured... (Associated Press) 
 
 KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The new leader of the Afghan Taliban said on Friday that the capture of the northern Afghan city of Kunduz was a "symbolic victory" that showed the strength of the insurgency — even though the Taliban pulled out of the city after three days. 
 
 Still, the three-day occupation of Kunduz was also "a historic event," which was "celebrated by the ordinary people of the city," said Mullah Akhtar Mansoor. 
 
 Mansoor, who spoke to The Associated Press by telephone from an unknown location, was appointed the Taliban leader in August, after revelations that the group's founder, Mullah Muhammad Omar, had died more than two years ago. 
 
 The Taliban captured Kunduz in a blitz Monday and held it until Afghan government forces pushed them out of the city on Thursday. 
 
 The fall and three-day occupation of Kunduz — an important city of 300,000 residents that lies on a strategic road to the border with Tajikistan — was a huge boost for Mansoor whose leadership of the Taliban had been questioned from the start. 
 
 At the same time, it was a humbling defeat for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and raised questions over whether the U.S.-trained military was capable of defending the country now that most coalition forces have withdrawn. 
 
 "The victory is a symbolic victory for us, and moreover, it is also a historical event which will be remembered," Mansoor said. 
 
 "People who said we were a small force with an unchosen leader can now see how wrong they were about the potential and strength my people have," he added. 
 
 The Taliban have been fighting to overthrow the Kabul government since their 1996-2001 regime was overthrown in a U.S.-led invasion. The capture of Kunduz was the first time they have taken a provincial capital since then. 
 
 Ghani has launched an investigation into how the Taliban, with only a few hundred gunmen, could have overwhelmed the city, which was defended by a few thousand government troops. 
 
 In Kunduz, residents said sporadic firefights continued Friday as troops swept the city street-to-street to dislodge any militants still hiding in people's homes. 
 
 Mansoor said the success of the movement in taking the city in a surprise attack had also allegedly countered Afghan government propaganda, "which said that the people of Afghanistan are against the Taliban and want to rid them from their country." 
 
 ___ 
 
 Khan reported from Kandahar, Afghanistan.
– The Taliban was only in full control of Kunduz for a couple of days, but that was more than long enough to remind the world that it can still rival ISIS for brutality. Residents tell the New York Times that within hours of their victory, the militants promised that Taliban rule in the first major Afghan city the group had controlled since 2001 would be tolerant and there would be no looting or summary executions. Within a day, those promises proved to be worthless, with militants plundering the city and going door to door seeking and killing people with a connection to the Kabul government, the Times reports. Hassina Sarwari, who runs a shelter for abused women, tells the Times that militants tried to hunt down the shelter's residents and workers. When the militants couldn't find the caretaker, they murdered her husband and kidnapped her son, says Sarwari, who managed to escape the city. The Afghan army moved to retake the city on Thursday and is now believed to control most of it, although fighting continues in some areas, the BBC reports. Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, who became the group's new leader in August, tells the AP that the capture of Kunduz was a "symbolic victory" that showed the group's strength and was "celebrated by the ordinary people of the city."