US military kills ‘70 senior Taliban’ in year’s largest operation
United States forces in Afghanistan carried out the largest operation against the Taliban in the past year, killing dozens of commanders and members of the group’s elite Red Unit special forces.
Serving under the Nato-led operation Resolute Support, US forces in Afghanistan said on Wednesday that 70 senior leaders were killed in “a series of precision strikes over a 10-day period”.
“These strikes represent one of the largest blows to Taliban leadership in the past year, the cumulative effects of which will be felt for quite some time,” Gen John Nicholson, who leads American troops in the country, said on Wednesday.
The Taliban’s Red Unit is a highly trained and wellarmed insurgent unit that emerged in late 2016 across the southern provinces.
Reports have indicated that the Red Unit fighters are armed with high-end equipment, such as night-vision goggles, that have increased their capacity to target security checkpoint and Afghan security forces. Some are better armed and equipped than Afghan security forces.
Reportedly among the key figures killed in the operations between May 17 and 26 were several Taliban shadow governors, highly skilled bomb makers as well as Red Unit fighters in Helmand.
The US forces said a drone strike on May 26 killed a skilled bomb-maker who had been active for the past 13 years.
The most significant operation, however, was a strike on a key Taliban command centre in Musa Qala during a meeting of the group’s commanders on May 24. Four truck-mounted rockets hit the command post, killing dozens.
“Among the more than 50 casualties were the deputy shadow governor of Helmand, [several] Taliban district governors, intelligence commanders and key provincial-level leadership from Kandahar, Kunduz, Herat, Farah, Uruzgan and Helmand provinces,” the Resolute Support statement reported.
The report was denied by the Taliban. The group’s spokesman, Qari Muhammad Yousuf Ahmadi, said: “The enemy [US forces] targeted two civilian compounds, martyring two villagers and leaving six more wounded.”