Taliban step up security ahead of supreme leaders Kandahar mosque visit on Eid [Video]

The Taliban are stepping up security after it emerged that Isis could attack its reclusive supreme leader during his expected visit to a Kandahar mosque for Eid prayers, local media reports said.

Hibatullah Akhundzada is an Islamic scholar who almost never appears in public. He rarely leaves the Taliban heartland in southern Afghanistan’s Kandahar province.

He and his circle have been instrumental in imposing restrictions on women and girls that have sparked an international outcry and isolated the Taliban on the global stage.

Photos and videos from Kandahar on Sunday showed Taliban fighters transporting and laying a brick barrier around a mosque ahead of Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

Reports had emerged on Friday that Isis, which is opposed to the Taliban, …