However government officials have denied the claim and said they have pushed back Taliban insurgents seeking to re-establish their hard-line Islamist regime after being toppled by US-led military intervention in 2001.
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Mohammad says he and most residents of Sangin fled to the Helmand provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, when the fighting escalated.
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The UK Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday that British troops had been deployed to the province to support local forces after the Afghan Defence Minister called for a desperate worldwide support and air cover.
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I realized I was putting on more and more weight and getting bigger but it was like a snowball I couldn’t stop. He will be buried in Sonora today (Saturday). ” We are dismayed by the news “, she added.
The ministry named the dead commander as Mullah Nasir, a confidant of Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour.
The fierce fighting in Helmand, a traditional Taliban stronghold and one of the world´s main centres of opium production, has piled pressure on President Ashraf Ghani, already on the defensive as security worsens across the country.
A Taliban claim that they had the district under their control was widely refuted.
Afghan police keep watch during an ongoing battle with Taliban militants in the Marjah district of Helmand Province, on December 23, 2015.
Afghan commanders have repeatedly requested more helicopters, and closer air support and intelligence from surveillance aircraft and at least two airstrikes have been carried out this week.
The Taliban has recently stepped up its offensive in Afghanistan, seizing entire regions and inflicting deaths on national and foreign personnel this month alone.
Fierce fighting has frequently happened in the last two years, between Afghanistan government troops and the Taliban fighters.
“The Taliban are in control of the district”, a source said.
US President Barack Obama has said US forces would stay in Afghanistan after next year because of the weakness of the Afghan army and the growing terrorist threat.
The presence of a small contingent of British troops, who arrived in the Shorab base – formerly Britain’s Camp Bastion during their Afghan combat mission – on Wednesday had helped boost morale of both civilians and security forces, officials said. “It seems meant to demonstrate that the former Coalition partners still care about Afghanistan”, Williams College Afghan Media Project Director David Edwards observed.
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But that won’t make much difference, and there is no chance whatever that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries will build their troop strength in Afghanistan back up to the level – around 140,000 – where it was five years ago. It is no longer so simple for Pakistan, he added, “as it may have been in the past, even if they in principle agree, to distinguish between good and bad Taliban”.
