Afghan security forces have launched their latest offensive in the Sangin district, where the Taliban are largely in control, police said Thursday.
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Prior to the withdrawal of the bulk of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation troops from Afghanistan a year ago, Sangin was a major centre of the military alliance’s involvement in Afghanistan.
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An Afghan army soldier, Yaseen Zamarai, told The Associated Press news agency from inside the town the Taliban were outside his building and had been pushed back after entering once earlier in the day.
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If the Taliban took control of Sangin, they would control supply routes to the districts and gain valuable influence over neighboring provinces, he said.
The Taliban spokesman for southern Afghanistan, Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, tweeted that by midafternoon Wednesday, “Sangin district has completely collapsed to the Taliban” and that insurgents had captured Afghan soldiers and ammunition.
“The military is in position and the operation is ongoing”, Stanekzai told a news conference in Kabul, adding that reinforcements had arrived in the province to relieve troops in Sangin.
Instead, British troops, which are part of the UKs delegation to the United Nations Resolute Support Mission, were sent to the district of Sangin to help the Afghan forces.
Helmand borders Pakistan’s violence-hit southwestern Baluchistan province and the war zone is located around 90 miles west of the provincial capital, Quetta, the Pakistani city from where Afghan officials allege the Taliban’s leadership council named “Quetta Shura” directs the insurgency.
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“Taliban rumors that they have captured the district are not true”, he said.
“Rumors about Lashkar Gah (falling to the Taliban) are totally baseless because we don’t have fear of losing the districts, so there is no fear of losing the center”, Abdullah said. They were deployed to Camp Shorabak, on the site of Camp Bastion, the former British Army headquarters in Afghanistan, the ministry said.
A suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed three foreign troops in an attack on a joint Afghan-NATO foot patrol on Monday, a senior Afghan official said. North Atlantic Treaty Organisation said that they had not conducted any airstrikes in Sangin but the Afghan air force probably had.
Along with the Islamic State, the Taliban are on a Russian government list of terrorist organizations.
President Barack Obama in October announced that thousands of US troops would remain in Afghanistan past 2016, backpedaling on previous plans to reduce the force and acknowledging that Afghan forces are not ready to stand alone.
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Whether this means little more than what it does on paper remains to be seen, as the Taliban has become increasingly factionalised after the death of leader Mullah Omar, with the faction led by Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour being rejected by other factions within the group.
