WASHINGTON: The Taliban are openly active in 70 per cent of Afghanistan’s districts, fully controlling 4 per cent of the country and demonstrating an open physical presence in another 66 per cent, according to a BBC study published on Tuesday.

The BBC estimate, which it said was based on conversations with more than 1,200 individual local sources in all districts of the South Asian country, was significantly higher than the most recent assessment by the Nato-led coalition of the Taliban’s presence.

The coalition said on Tuesday that the Taliban contested or controlled only 44 per cent of Afghan districts as of October 2017.

Afghanistan has been reeling over the past nine days from a renewed spate of violence that is adding scrutiny to the latest, more aggressive US-backed strategy to bolster Afghan forces battling the Taliban in a 16-year-old war.

A bomb hidden in an ambulance struck the city centre and killed more than 100 people, just over a week after an attack on the Hotel Intercontinental, also in Kabul, which left more than 20 people dead, including four US citizens.

Although the BBC counted 399 districts in Afghanistan, the Nato-led force counted 407 districts. The reason behind the discrepancy was not immediately clear.

The BBC study said the Afghan government controlled 122 districts, or about 30 per cent of the country. Still, it noted that did not mean that they were free from Taliban attacks.

“Kabul and other major cities, for example, suffered major attacks - launched from adjacent areas, or by sleeper cells - during the research period, as well as before and after,” the report said.

Asked about the BBC’s study, the Pentagon did not comment directly, but pointed to the latest figures by the Nato-led coalition asserting that about 56 per cent of Afghanistan’s territory was under Afghan government control or influence.

The study by Britain’s public broadcaster quoted a spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani playing down the findings.

The BBC study also said Daesh had a presence in 30 districts, but noted it did not fully control any of them.

Afghanistan’s intelligence chief and interior minister made a surprise visit to Pakistan’s capital on Wednesday following a recent spate of deadly attacks in Afghanistan.

The visit by Masoom Stanikzai and Wais Ahmed Barmak comes amid charges leveled by Afghanistan that some of the attacks were carried out by perpetrators linked to Pakistan’s powerful spy agency, the ISI.

The attacks, which have killed nearly 200 people and wounded hundreds more, have been alternately claimed by the Taliban and the Daesh affiliate in Afghanistan. Most of the attacks in the capital Kabul have been blamed on the Haqqani network, whose links to Pakistan’s intelligence agency dates back to the 1980s Soviet invasion of Afghanistan when Pakistan and the United States were on the same page about using jihadi groups to oust invading Russian soldiers.

Afghanistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Mahmoud Saikal tweeted on Monday that the father of one of the insurgents involved in the bloody Jan.20 assault on Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel “conceded his son was trained in Chaman of Balochistan Province of Pakistan by the Inter Services Intelligence of Pakistan.”

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry and Afghanistan’s Ambassador to Pakistan, Omar Zakhilwal, confirmed the officials’ visit but there were no immediate details.

Reuters