More than 20 insurgents including Arab, Chechen and Pakistani fighters, have been killed by NATO and Afghan forces who are ramping up operations in the east against a Taliban faction linked to al-Qaeda, the international coalition said yesterday.
Separately, a NATO service member was killed yesterday following an insurgent attack in the volatile south. NATO did not disclose the nationality of the service member or details about the death.
The joint force operation began on Wednesday against dozens of insurgents holed up in a mountainous area of Zadran District of Paktia Province. The operation focused on disrupting the Haqqani network’s movement in an area used to stage attacks in the capital, Kabul, and along a highway that links Khost Province and Gardez, the provincial capital of Paktia.
Combined security forces also discovered and destroyed multiple explosive devices and bomb-making equipment, including trip wire and blasting caps, weapons and ammunition. A coalition airstrike destroyed an enemy ammunitions bunker.
The US considers the Haqqani group, led by Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin, as one of the most dangerous Taliban networks because of its links to al-Qaeda. The group is suspected of playing a major role in the bombing of a CIA base in Khost on Dec. 30 last year as well as a series of attacks in Kabul. It is based in the western border area of Pakistan, where US forces cannot operate on the ground.
“The Haqqani network continually seeks to establish strongholds in the Khost-Gardez pass, disrupting the local government and facilitating the movement of foreign fighters, explosives and weapons into Afghanistan,” said US Army Colonel Rafael Torres, a spokesman at NATO.
Two other operations in June resulted in the deaths of more than 50 Haqqani fighters. Afghan and coalition forces killed 17 Haqqani fighters, including a commander, Fazil Subhan, during a fierce firefight in Khost on June 9, NATO said.
A week later, in the Jani Khel district of Paktia, Afghan and coalition forces killed at least 35 insurgents, including several key leaders of both the Haqqani and Taliban networks. The security force killed Hamiddullah, a Haqqani commander for Sabari District in Khost, who had direct ties to Haqqani senior leadership based in Pakistan and was reportedly responsible for an ambush of an Afghan National Army unit in March, which killed three Afghan soldiers.
Also in the south, three Afghan civilians were killed and another was wounded by insurgents in three separate incidents in Kandahar Province on Friday. Two of the civilians were killed when a rocket-propelled grenade hit their vehicle in Arghandab District.
Another was fatally stabbed by insurgents near the governor’s compound in Kandahar City.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS