Civilians suffer as Taliban battlefront expands

Mauludeen lifts the shirt of his writhing, shrieking infant daughter to reveal a gunshot wound, highlighting the plight of tens of thousands of Afghans caught in the crossfire on the Taliban's expanding northern battlefront.

Civilians are bearing the brunt of a large-scale insurgent offensive in Kunduz province, the keystone of the Taliban's summer fighting season, which is expected to be the bloodiest in a decade.

Kunduz is facing a humanitarian crisis, with thousands of families trapped in a vortex of violence as militancy spreads across the north, beyond traditional Taliban hotbeds in the south and east.