At least 20 people were killed when a gunfight broke out at a wedding party in northern Afghanistan, officials said on Monday, highlighting the fragile security situation in the war-torn country. 
 
 
 
 The clashes erupted late Sunday in Deh Salah district in Baghlan, a once-tranquil province that has recently been plagued by growing insecurity as the Taliban insurgency spreads north from its southern and eastern strongholds. 
 
 “As a result of the clashes, 20 people were killed and 10 others were wounded,” provincial police spokesman Jawed Basharat said. 
 
 District police chief Gulistan Qusani said the armed men traded verbal barbs before the gunfight broke out. 
 
 “A local security official fired in the air after the verbal exchange heated up ... and then both sides started trading fire,” Qusani said, giving a higher death toll of 21. 
 
 He added that the victims were all male guests at the wedding aged between 14 and 60. 
 
 Baghlan police spokesman Sultan Mohammad Ebadi said an official delegation had been sent to the area to investigate the matter. 
 
 Fatal gun fights and celebratory gunfire are woefully common at Afghan weddings, which have boomed in recent years in a country battered by nearly 40 years of war. 
 
 Afghan soldiers mistakenly fired mortars at a wedding party in late December in the southern province of Helmand, killing 17 women and children. 
 
 Some witnesses said the army attack was triggered when wedding guests shot celebratory gunfire into the air as the bride was brought to the groom’s house. 
 
 In July 2012, a suicide bomber killed a prominent Afghan lawmaker and 16 other people at his daughter’s wedding party in the north of the country. 
 
 And in June 2011, gunmen stormed a wedding party in eastern Afghanistan, killing the groom and eight other people in an attack blamed on Taliban-linked insurgents. 
 
 The Afghan government conducted its first face-to-face talks with Taliban cadres on 7 July in a Pakistani hill station, aimed at ending nearly 14 years of war. 
 
 Afghan officials said Friday they will meet insurgents this week for a second round of talks, pledging to press for a ceasefire in negotiations likely to be held in China. 
 
 But despite the willingness to engage in talks there has been no let-up in militant attacks, which are taking a heavy toll on civilians. 
 
 A suicide bomber on Wednesday killed 19 people including women and children in a crowded market in the northern province of Faryab, as insurgents intensify their annual summer offensive launched in late April. ||||| KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A shootout at a wedding party in northern Afghanistan has left 21 people dead and eight wounded, an official said Monday. 
 
 An Afghan wounded teenager lies on a bed at a hospital in Puli Khumri, capital city of Baghlan province, north of Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, July 27, 2015. A shootout at a wedding party in northern Afghanistan... (Associated Press) 
 
 An Afghan wounded teenager lies on a bed at a hospital in Puli Khumri, capital city of Baghlan province, north of Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, July 27, 2015. A shootout at a wedding party in northern Afghanistan... (Associated Press) 
 
 An Afghan wounded teenager lies on a bed in a hospital in Puli Khumri, capital city of Baghlan province, north of Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, July 27, 2015. A shootout at a wedding party in northern Afghanistan... (Associated Press) 
 
 Abdul Jabar Perdili, police chief of Baghlan province, said a gunfight broke out between two groups attending the wedding in Dih Salah district late Sunday. He said that most of the dead were wedding guests and at least two of the wounded were younger than 18 years old. 
 
 Perdili's spokesman, Jaweed Basharat, had earlier said that 10 people were wounded. Conflicting accounts are common in the chaotic aftermath of violent incidents. 
 
 Baghlan and other provinces of the north have been plagued by insurgent attacks since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 that toppled the Taliban. However, the war is often used as a cover for criminal activity and personal feuds. 
 
 The police chief of Dih Salah, Col. Gulistan Qasani, said hostility between the two groups involved in the gunfight had been simmering for many years. 
 
 "The clash broke out after a relative of a provincial police official was assassinated during the wedding party," Qasani said. 
 
 He said some 400 people had gathered at a private house for the wedding of a local mullah's son. 
 
 "When we collected the bodies it was difficult to determine who were the shooters and who were not, because I could not find any weapons," Qasani said. 
 
 Meanwhile in northern Sari Pul province, a local police commander and seven of his men surrendered to the Taliban in Kohistanat district, according to provincial police chief Gen. Mohammad Asef Jabarkhail. 
 
 Jabarkhail said the surrender came after Taliban fighters attacked police checkpoints on Sunday. Reinforcements have reached the area to support police still fighting, he said. 
 
 The Taliban, who often exaggerate battlefield gains, said in a statement that 100 police in Sari Pul had defected to their side, a claim Jabarkhail denied. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. SUBSCRIBE 
 
 KABUL, Afghanistan — At least 21 people were shot dead at a wedding after an argument turned violent, a police chief in northern Afghanistan told NBC News on Monday. 
 
 The shooters were guests at the event and believed to be members of illegal local militias, rather than militant groups such as the Taliban or al Qaeda, provincial chief Gen. Abdul Jabar Purdeli said. 
 
 "They started firing indiscriminately" into the crowd after a dispute over local rivalries, Purdeli added. 
 
 Related: Are Afghans Ready for the Taliban's Return? 
 
 Most of the people killed at Sunday's event in the village of Charkara in northern Baghlan province were civilians, according to the police chief. The victims included two children. 
 
 Eight other people were wounded, Purdeli said. ||||| Expand Afghan Local Police, Gizab village of Uruzgan province, Afghanistan, April 2011. © 2011 AP Photo 
 
 (Kabul) – Militias and some units of the new US-backed Afghan Local Police are committing serious human rights abuses, but the government is not providing proper oversight or holding them accountable, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The Afghan government and the US should sever ties with irregular armed groups and take immediate steps to create properly trained and vetted security forces that are held accountable for their actions. 
 
 The 102-page report, “‘Just Don’t Call It a Militia:’ Impunity, Militias and the ‘Afghan Local Police,’” documents serious abuses, such as killings, rape, arbitrary detention, abductions, forcible land grabs, and illegal raids by irregular armed groups in northern Kunduz province and the Afghan Local Police (ALP) force in Baghlan, Herat, and Uruzgan provinces. The Afghan government has failed to hold these forces to account, fostering future abuses and generating support for the Taliban and other opposition forces, Human Rights Watch found. 
 
 “The Afghan government has responded to the insurgency by reactivating militias that threaten the lives of ordinary Afghans” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Kabul and Washington need to make a clean break from supporting abusive and destabilizing militias to have any hope of a viable, long-term security strategy.” 
 
 As part of its exit strategy, the US military is training and mentoring the year-old village-level ALP force.In March 2011, the commander of the international forces in Afghanistan at the time, Gen. David Petraeus, told the US Senate that the ALP is “arguably the most critical element in our effort to help Afghanistan develop the capability to secure itself.” 
 
 Cases investigated by Human Rights Watch raise serious concerns about Afghan government and international efforts to arm, fund, vet, and hold accountable irregular armed groups. In Kunduz province, militias have spread quickly in recent years. Their increase is a deliberate policy of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, which has reactivated militia networks primarily through the Shura-e-Nazar (“Supervisory Council” of the north) and Jamiat-i-Islami networks, and provided money and weapons without sufficient oversight. 
 
 “Just Don’t Call It a Militia” is based on over 120 interviews with victims of abuses and family members, village elders, witnesses, nongovernmental organization workers, Afghan security, human rights and government officials, foreign military officials and diplomats, journalists, and Afghanistan analysts. 
 
 In most cases of serious abuses documented by Human Rights Watch in Kunduz, no action had been taken against those responsible. For example, in Khanabad district in August 2009, a militia killed four men due to a family dispute. An NDS official confirmed that the police could not arrest anyone involved in the killing because of the militia commander’s connection to the provincial chief of police and a local strongman who is closely involved with abusive armed groups. A prosecutor who is also the father of one of the men killed told Human Rights Watch, “No one has helped me, and I work for the government, so what about the other people? Who will listen to them?” 
 
 “Patronage links to senior officials in the local security forces and the central government allow supposedly pro-government militias to terrorize local communities and operate with impunity,” Adams said. 
 
 At the same time, the rapid build-up of the ALP has contributed to concerns about whether it will be a law-abiding force, Human Rights Watch said. Created in July 2010 at the behest of the US, the force is supposed to supplement the Afghan national army and police at the community and village levels. The Afghan Local Police is seen by the US military as a way to address the pressures of trying to hand over control of security to the Afghan government by 2014. 
 
 Village shuras (councils) are tasked to nominate and vet members of the ALP, whose units report to the district chief of police. Units trained for only 21 days are being armed and deployed in areas where there is limited Afghan national army and police presence. As of August, 7,000 men had been recruited to the force. Plans are under way to arm and train up to 30,000. 
 
 Afghan and US officials told Human Rights Watch that the ALP has improved security in some areas. In some communities, local residents interviewed by Human Rights Watch welcomed the new force and cited improvements in security. But other residents said the new police had not been properly vetted, citing criminal and insurgent elements being absorbed into the force. Many complained that the ALP, like other irregular armed groups, is not held accountable when implicated in abuses. 
 
 Although the force is fairly new, Human Rights Watch documented several serious abuses by its members. In February in Shindand district in Herat province, for example, an ALP unit raided several houses, stealing belongings, beating residents, and illegally detaining six men. In another case, the ALP have been accused of beating teenage boys and hammering nails into the feet of one boy, but have not been arrested. 
 
 In Baghlan province, former fighters with the Islamist Hezb-i-Islami, including a local strongman, Nur-ul Haq, have been recruited into the ALP. Haq and his men have been implicated in killings, land-grabs, and abductions. But the police have refused to investigate the allegations, telling Human Rights Watch that they are unable to question suspected ALP members due to their connections with powerful government officials and US special forces. In April, four armed ALP members in Baghlan abducted a 13-year-old boy on his way home from the bazaar and took him to the house of an ALP sub-commander, where he was gang raped. He escaped the next day. Although the assailants’ identities were well known, no arrests have taken place. 
 
 In Uruzgan province in December 2010, a local strongman, Neda Muhammed, detained six elders after they refused to agree to provide men to the ALP. Some ALP members in Khas Uruzgan have been implicated by local officials and residents in illegal raids, beatings, and forcible collection of ushr (informal tax). 
 
 Afghan and international proponents of the ALP point to safeguards, such as the Afghan Interior Ministry control over the ALP, village shura vetting of members, and training and mentoring by US special operations forces. But the national police lack adequate command and control structures, and the ALP often far outnumber the national police in the districts where they operate, Human Rights Watch said. Interior Ministry officials have also conceded to Human Rights Watch that such safeguards had also been promised for many of the previous community defense initiatives that ended in failure. 
 
 Previous programs to create local defense forces have been hijacked by local strongmen or by ethnic or political factions, spreading fear, fuelling vendettas, and in some areas even playing into the hands of Taliban insurgents, Human Rights Watch said. One example was the Afghan National Auxiliary Police (ANAP), created in 2006, which was barely trained, underwent minimal vetting, had poorly defined rules of engagement, had high levels of infiltration, and was highly corrupt. Another, the Afghan Public Protection Force (AP3) in Wardak province, was hijacked by local strongmen and became involved in beatings and intimidation. 
 
 “While there is a need for more security at the village level, the Afghan and US governments should be very careful not to repeat the mistakes of militias past,” Adams said. “If quick corrections are not made, the ALP could end up being just another militia that causes more problems than it cures.” 
 
 Human Rights Watch called on the US and Afghan governments to avoid the rush to set up new units of the ALP around the country without proper vetting, oversight, and accountability mechanisms, as has occurred with some units. 
 
 Human Rights Watch also urged the Afghan government to investigate all allegations of abuse by militias and the ALP, to allocate adequate resources to investigate complaints, and to create an external complaints body to act on reports of abuses by the ALP and other police forces. 
 
 “Pressure to reduce international troop levels should not be at the expense of the rights of Afghans,” Adams said. “The Afghan government and its supporters need to understand that insecurity does not come only from the insurgency. Poor governance, corruption, human rights abuses, and impunity for government-affiliated forces all are drivers of the insurgency, and these issues need to be addressed if true stability is to come to Afghanistan.”
– What was supposed to be a joyous occasion turned into a bloodbath last night as two armed groups at an Afghan wedding got into a gunfight, killing 21 people—including two teen boys—and wounding at least eight others, an Afghan official says, per CNN. The shooters, most of whom were guests at the wedding in Baghlan province, were believed to be members of illegal local militias, not the Taliban or al-Qaeda, NBC News reports. Although CNN says the cause of the fight was "unclear," the police chief of the Dih Salah district of Baghlan tells the AP it appears the fight broke out after a relative of a provincial police officer was killed during the celebration for a local mullah's son, for which 400 or so people had gathered at a private house. Meanwhile, the police chief tells the Guardian that " a local security official fired in the air after the verbal exchange heated up … and then both sides started trading fire." The paper notes that "celebratory gunfire" and fatal shootouts are "woefully common" in the region. The paper cites a December wedding in which 17 women and children were killed after Afghan army soldiers heard such celebratory gunfire and blasted mortars at the wedding party by mistake. The AP notes that Baghlan and other northern Afghan provinces have been riddled with insurgent attacks since the 2001 US-led invasion overthrew the Taliban, but it adds that local feuds and other criminal activity still proliferate under the cover of war. (The Taliban attacked the Afghan Parliament just last month.)