Abdul Majeed Akhonzada, deputy director of the provincial council, said on Saturday that Kanashin district has “fallen into Taliban hands”.
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The fall of the district means the Taliban control 60 percent of Helmand, the AP reports.
Attacks by unmanned planes against militants in Afghanistan are proved deadly and security officials said the government forces would largely use the drone strikes against militants and their hideouts on battle grounds.
In Kabul, an Afghan official said on Friday that four gunmen were killed and 15 others were injured, including five policemen, in clashes that took place with militants in central Afghanistan.
SIGAR attributed the loss to a NATO-backed change in tactics that saw the redeployment of many Afghan troops from hundreds of checkpoints to free them up for offensive operations against the Taliban.
They want to consolidate the checkpoints, so that there are fewer of them but each one is more heavily-manned and less vulnerable to attack.
“Policies of the Islamic Emirate (Taliban) about the region and the world also came under discussion”, the leader said, adding that they wanted help of the Chinese leadership to raise these issues on world forums and help get freedom from occupying forces.
The report released earlier this week said that about 65.6 per cent of districts across Afghanistan were under government “control or influence” at the end of May, “a decrease from the 70.5 per cent” at the end of January.
The renewed offensives are a bid by the Afghan government to regain control of some five per cent of territory that has been lost to insurgent groups since May previous year, according to the USA special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction.
A delegation led by Abbas Stanakzai, head of the Taliban’s political office in Qatar, visited Beijing on July 18-22 at the invitation of the Chinese government, a senior member of the Taliban said. He said they had inflicted heavy casualties of security forces and seized weapons and ammunition from them.
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Afghan commanders said they faced little resistance as they pushed into Kot after a heavy air and artillery bombardment as fighters pulled out into nearby mountain areas.
