UK Special Forces battle Taliban
BRITISH Special Forces have been involved in a series of close-quarter battles against the Taliban in northern Afghanistan, killing up to 200 insurgents.
The Mail on Sunday has received eyewitness accounts of commandos from the Special Boat Service (SBS) directing the assault on Taliban positions in the city of Kunduz and at a nearby air base.
The fighting was continuing last night.
The operation to retake Kunduz is the largest involving UK troops in Afghanistan since British combat operations officially ended a year ago.
The streets of the city are understood to be littered with Taliban corpses and burned-out vehicles.
It comes as at least nine staff working for the international medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) were killed in an air strike on a clinic in the city.
US forces were carrying out bomb- ing raids at the time and Nato admitted the hospital may have been hit, resulting in ‘collateral damage’.
MSF said all parties in the conflict had been told the precise GPS co-ordinates of the clinic many times, and it condemned the ‘horrific bombing’. Many staff and patients remain unaccounted for.
The SBS flew to Kunduz from Kabul on Wednesday on a US Hercules transport aircraft, then transferred to a fleet of armoured helicopters to launch a daring dawn insertion into the city.
The elite troops joined platoons from the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) for the assault on the insurgents, who had dug in at major road junctions around Kunduz and in the centre of the city, which is home to 300,000 people. The battles involving the SBS were continuing in Kunduz last night.
A defence source said: ‘The fighting remains intense. Fortunately the British have not taken any casualties yet, but several Afghans have suffered blast wounds. The SBS were called in because the Afghan troops were in total disarray.
‘With the guidance of the SBS they’ve co-ordinated themselves. British radio operators known as “JTACs” – Joint Terminal Attack Controllers – have also called in air strikes on Taliban positions, speaking to the pilots of US jets and directing their cannons and missiles towards enemy strongholds.’
The SBS are part of a 6,500-strong international coalition of Special Forces troops based in Afghanistan which also includes United States, German, Dutch and Norwegian soldiers. Troops from all these nations are understood to have deployed to Kunduz in a desperate bid to expel the Taliban.
Kunduz was the first major urban centre to fall to the Taliban in 14 years. This was considered a humbling defeat for the Afghan government and its international allies, including the UK.
Britain officially ended combat operations in Afghanistan in October 2014 after eight years of intense fighting in Helmand Province.
The UK death toll in the country since 2001 stands at 454. The MoD said: ‘We do not comment on British Special Forces operations.’