A group of the Taliban militants have reportedly gang raped a woman in southern Helmand province of Afghanistan, a local security official has claimed.
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The fall of the district means the Taliban control 60 percent of Helmand, the AP reports.
Fighting that has raged for the past week in the Archi and Qalay-i-Zal districts of Kunduz province is continuing, the governor’s spokesman Mahmood Danish said.
Much of the Marjah, Sangin, Garmser, and Dishu districts had already fallen to the Taliban.
Five U.S. special operations members were wounded while working with Afghan special forces in an operation to clear areas controlled by ISIS in eastern Afghanistan, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan said on Thursday.
Gul Agha Rohani, Kabul’s deputy chief of police, said the explosion happened east of the city’s global airport. He said that bodies still littered the ground. 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.
Residents, however, prefer the regularly-spaced small checkpoints, officials have said, as they make them feel safe.
Kanashin borders Pakistan and major poppy-producing districts, and is an important drug smuggling route.
A report released on Friday by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said that Afghanistan’s government lost control or influence in almost five percent of its territory between January and May. Such efforts are likely to persist as long as they have control over the opium-producing region of Helmand.
The report said the Afghan government was in control of 65.6 percent of the districts in the country in May, a drop from 70.5 percent near the end of January. The group also considers Helmand to be their heartland and something that is worth fighting for.
In a brief statement sent to VOA, he said the insurgents inflicted heavy casualties on Afghan security forces before they abandoned Khanashin.
The explosion in the capital comes a little over a week after a suicide attack in Kabul by Islamic State (IS) fighters on a Hazara minority demonstration left more than 80 people dead and 230 injured.
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A 40-year-old man was killed instantly and a 23-year-old man died later of his injuries, Ahmadi said.
