Taliban slam 'baseless and biased' UN report suggesting rifts within ranks

The Taliban condemned on Sunday a baseless and biased report from the UN Security Council highlighting rifts within the group's ranks.

The last seven months have seen a greater shift of power from the capital Kabul to the southern city of Kandahar, a Taliban heartland and the base of the group's supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada.

A report issued earlier in June by the UN Security Council's Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team said that the Taliban governance structures remain highly exclusionary, Pashtun-centred and repressive toward all forms of opposition.

It also said Kandahar's return as the seat of power like it was during the Taliban's rule of Afghanistan in the 1990s circumvents senior Taliban ministers in Kabul, the centre of the current government, because of the way decisions are made.

Key figures, such as the Taliban's main spokesman, have set up offices in the south of Kandahar. Monumental decrees such as those excluding women and girls from education