The militant group has taken over the entire district except for the police chief’s compound and another compound, where a battalion of the Afghan National Army is based, according to Shah Mahmood Ashna, a spokesman for the police chief in Helmand province.
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The commander killed in the offensive is considered to be a close confidant of the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, officials said.
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Caption + Afghan National Army soldiers guard at a checkpoint on the way to the Sangin district of Helmand province, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2015.
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Responsibility for combating the Taliban insurgency will continue to largely fall on the Afghan army and police, while foreign forces will stay on exclusively to provide essential advice and assistance, James Dobbins, who served as US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2013-2014, told Sputnik.
“An hour later we recaptured that building and now we have it”, he said.
“Afghan army commandoes and police forces have launched an operation in Sangin”, said interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi, claiming heavy Taleban losses. Both took place before midnight. Taliban statements regularly exaggerate battlefield gains, though government casualty figures are also impossible to verify.
A fertile region that is a key location in Afghanistan’s poppy trade, Sangin lies in the south of the country in an area that has traditionally been a Taliban heartland.
Sangin is a prize for the Taliban as it sits on routes for drug, arms and other contraband that fund the insurgency.
Reinforcements were rushed to the region, the acting Defense Minister Masoom Stanekzai told reporters on Wednesday, after the province’s deputy governor, Mohammad Jan Rasulyar, used his Facebook account to plead for help from central authorities.
Government officials yesterday denied reports that Sangin was on the brink of falling to the Taleban, saying reinforcements were trying to relieve dozens of security forces holed up in the district centre.
The extremists claim to have captured almost the entire district of Sangin after storming its frontlines on Sunday, tightening their grip on the southern Helmand province.
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The northern city of Kunduz briefly fell to the Taliban in late September – the biggest victory for the group in 14 years of war.
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Taking control of the Sangin district will also let Taliban militants cut the supply line for government troops in provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. Talk of a dialogue between the Kabul government and the insurgents has resurfaced following a regional conference in the Pakistani capital earlier this month where hopes were raised that a process that was cancelled over the summer could be revived in 2016.
