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Conflicts

Taliban kills 40-plus Afghan government troops

October 19, 2017

The Taliban has killed 43 government troops at a military base in southern Afghanistan, the Defense Ministry reports. Nine soldiers were wounded and six remain missing, according to a statement from the ministry.

https://p.dw.com/p/2m993
Afghanistan
Image: Getty Images/AFP/S. Marai

At least 43 government soldiers have died after an attack claimed by the Taliban on a military base in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, officials said — the third such assault on a security installation this week. Troops killed at least nine of the group's fighters, according to the Defense Ministry.

"A group of insurgents attacked an army base in [the] Chashmo area of Maiwand district in Kandahar province," the ministry announced in a statement released on Thursday, adding that the assault had wounded nine of the base's 60 soldiers and six remained unaccounted for.

Karte Afghanistan Provinz Kandahar Englisch
Image: DW

Afghanistan's largest TV broadcaster, Tolo TV, reported that two suicide attackers had used stolen military vehicles to carry out the attack starting late Wednesday. Confirming the assault, Haji Sayed Jan Khakrezwal, the head of Kandahar's provincial council, spoke of a motor bomb attack followed by armed clashes in the Cheshmo area of Maiwand.

A growing trend

In a text to media outlets on Thursday, the Taliban claimed to have killed 60 members of the government's security forces. In recent months, the group has attacked military installations on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. Government forces have struggled to combat the resurgent Taliban since US and NATO forces formally concluded their combat mission at the end of 2014.

On Tuesday morning, the Taliban attacked a police training center in the eastern province of Paktia, killing 48 people, including about 20 civilians and the police chief. Elsewhere in Afghanistan, a Taliban ambush in the northern Balkh province late Wednesday killed six police, according to Shir Jan Durani, spokesman for the provincial police chief.

The attacks come as German officials have attempted to push a campaign of deportations to Afghanistan for people found guilty of crimes including drug dealing and petty theft or considered potential threats to national security. The United States has recently bolstered its own forces in Afghanistan.

mkg/msh (Reuters, AFP, dpa, AP)