A Taliban leader said the US withdrawing troops from Afghanistan meant the extremist group had won.

Haji Hekmat, the Taliban's shadow mayor in Afghanistan's northern Balkh district, told the BBC: "We have won the war and America has lost."

"We are ready for anything," he continued. "We are totally prepared for peace, and we are fully prepared for jihad."

President Joe Biden this week announced plans to pull all US troops out of Afghanistan by the symbolically important date of September 11.T

The US intelligence community warned in a Tuesday report that the Afghan government "will struggle to hold the Taliban at bay if the coalition withdraws support."

The Taliban said on Wednesday that it wanted all foreign military personnel out of Afghanistan by the end of April under a Trump-era agreement. "If the agreement is breached and foreign forces fail to exit our country on the specified date, problems will certainly be compounded," it added.