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October 20, 2017

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More deadly attacks in Afghanistan

Militants launched two separate attacks on Afghan security installations killing dozens of soldiers yesterday, the latest in a series of assaults this week that left more than 120 dead.

At least 43 Afghan soldiers were killed in a Taliban-claimed assault on a military base in southern Afghanistan that saw the insurgents blast their way into the compound with at least one explosives-laden Humvee, the defense ministry said.

The militants then razed the base in the Chashmo area of Maiwand district in Kandahar province to the ground, according to the ministry. “Unfortunately there is nothing left inside the camp. They have burned down everything,” a ministry spokesman said.

Just two soldiers were known to have survived unscathed, with nine wounded and six unaccounted for, officials said, underscoring the shocking casualties that Afghan security forces have faced in their struggle to beat back the insurgents. Ten militants were killed, the ministry added.

American forces carried out an air strike during a counter-terror operation in Maiwand yesterday, a United States military spokesman in Kabul said, though he did not specify whether the target was insurgents at the base. The Taliban claimed the ambush in a message that said all 60 security personnel on the base were killed.

Separately yesterday, militants besieged a police headquarters in the southeastern province of Ghazni, attacking it for the second time this week.

Air strikes were called in to support embattled police, said Ghazni provincial police chief Mohammad Zaman.

Officials said the earlier assault on the headquarters, which took place on Tuesday, left 20 people dead and 46 wounded. Two security personnel were said to have been killed yesterday.

Yesterday’s attacks take the number of suicide and gun assaults on security installations this week to four and increases the total death toll to more than 120, including soldiers, police and civilians.

US President Donald Trump vowed earlier this year to stay the course in Afghanistan, America’s longest war.

The Taliban said yesterday that the recent assaults were a “clear message to the Americans and the Kabul government, that they cannot scare us with their new so-called strategy.”




 

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