DUSHANBE, June 23, 2015, Asia-Plus -- Afghan government forces regained control of a key district near the northern city of Kunduz on Tuesday, after Taliban fighters had threatened to capture a provincial capital for the first time since being driven from power in 2001.

Tuesday''s victory came despite signs that the Islamist militant movement was stepping up its offensive in the broader war, six months after most foreign troops left the country.

A day earlier, a Taliban car bomber and six gunmen launched an on the Afghan parliament in Kabul.  All of the assailants were killed. One civilian also died and at least 30 people were wounded.

Reuters reports that on the front lines just outside Kunduz city in the north, Afghan army and police drove the Taliban back from Chardara district, which the insurgents had captured two days before.  provincial police chief Abdul Saboor Nasrati said.

"New reinforcements arrived in Kunduz from northern provinces. They have inflicted heavy casualties on the insurgents and pushed them back from Chardara district," provincial police chief Abdul Saboor Nasrati told Reuters in an interview.

Heman Nagarathnam, Medecins Sans Frontieres'' head of programs in Afghanistan, said the group''s hospital in Kunduz city was still operating normally and there were no plans to evacuate staff.

Speaking from Kunduz, he said the fighting had moved closer to the city and there had been a noticeable increase in the number of Afghan security personnel and checkpoints.

The violence in Kabul, Kunduz province and elsewhere has reportedly put Afghanistan''s security forces under more pressure than at any time since most NATO combat troops withdrew, and there appears to be no easy way out of the crisis.

President Ashraf Ghani met lawmakers from Kunduz at his Kabul palace to discuss the crisis, vowing “serious measures to retake lost territories and clear (the) northeastern zone of terrorists.”

U.S. officials in Washington said it was unlikely Kunduz would fall into Taliban hands, and disputed the idea that recent attacks signified the insurgents were gaining ground against NATO-trained Afghan forces, according to Reuters .