Military planes have air-dropped food and ammunition to besieged Afghan forces battling to flush out Taliban insurgents from Sangin, officials said Tuesday, two days after the emboldened militants stormed the strategic opium-growing district.
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Afghan National Army soldiers guard at a checkpoint on the way to the Sangin district of Helmand province, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2015. Sangin is a key district which straddles the opium- and heroin-trafficking route through southern Afghanistan.
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The Taliban began advancing on the district centre after storming government buildings, sending civilians fleeing as fears grew that the entire province was on the verge of falling to the insurgents.
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She had been licensed to drive the big rig since May, and told police she still wasn’t too confident backing the thing up. Sanders said the driver will at least have to pay 5 for disregarding a posted sign, reported The Associated Press .
According to Sediqi, Mullah Nasir was in charge of the Taliban group’s military command and a close ally of the group’s supreme leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor.
The US carried out two airstrikes in Sangin district in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, a region that has been overrun by Taliban fighters.
The remarks by Sediqi comes as Taliban militants have launched a major offensive in different districts of Helmand province, mainly focusing on Sangin district. The return of British troops is poignant, as they suffered more than 100 fatalities in Sangin during their 13-year combat mission.
The Taliban issued a statement saying that foreign forces were directly involved in the fighting in Sangin and accusing them of carrying out airstrikes on residential areas.
The crisis in Helmand has piled pressure on the government of President Ashraf Ghani, which was rocked by the fall of the northern city of Kunduz, seized by Taliban fighters in late September and held for several days.
The Afghan defence ministry said last night that fighting was continuing and that reinforcements had been sent to relieve trapped police and army units.
“We need help, we can’t hold them for much longer”, Zamarai said, his voice cracking.
Britain has sent a small contingent of soldiers to Helmand as advisers under the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation mandate.
Afghanistan’s Defense Minister is asking for air support to end the Taliban offensive.
But the Helmand Governor, Mirza Khan Rahimi, insisted the Sangin district “is completely under the control of the government security forces”.
“I was here and I’m still here”, said Shamsullah Sahrayee, a tribal elder in Sangin.
“They recaptured the district and police headquarters and the wounded were evacuated”.
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In the same interview on Wednesday, Kabulov said Russian Federation would be “ready to supply weapons” to Afghanistan but “will do it with due prudence and mostly on a commercial basis”.
