Air strikes hammer Islamic State group hideouts

KABUL — Afghanistan’s air force has pounded Islamic State targets in an eastern province where an Afghan and U.S. military raid last month killed the militant group’s top commander, the government said Monday.

The Interior Ministry said the air strikes killed at least 34 Islamic State fighters over the past 24 hours and destroyed an insurgent-controlled radio station in Nangarhar province. The casualty toll could not be independently confirmed as the area is off-limits to reporters.

The ministry also said the strikes targeted hideouts in Nazyan and Achin districts. It said the radio station had been illegally broadcasting Islamic State messages across the eastern province and was therefore a threat to the people and the government.

The government statement came after the Pentagon announced Sunday night that a military raid last month killed Abdul Haseeb Logari, the Islamic State chief in Nangarhar.

Logari was among several high-ranking leaders of the Islamic State group’s affiliate in Afghanistan who died in the raid carried out by Afghan Special Security Forces in partnership with U.S. forces, the Pentagon said.

A statement released Monday from Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s office also confirmed Logari’s death, adding that he was “responsible for ordering the attack on the military hospital in Kabul that took place in March in which around 50 people were killed and many more wounded.”

Earlier, Gen. John Nicholson, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said Logari was the second leader of the Islamic State in Afghanistan to be killed in the last nine months. He said the militants had “waged a barbaric campaign of death, torture and violence against the Afghan people, especially those in southern Nangarhar.”

After the March 8 Kabul hospital attack, Afghan and U.S. forces opened a counteroffensive in the province. Fighting there is still under way.

Two U.S. Army Rangers died in the April 27 raid. U.S. officials say they may have been killed as the result of friendly fire in the opening minutes of the three-hour battle.

The Islamic State group first emerged in Afghanistan in 2015, mainly in Nangarhar province but has since tried to enlarge its footprint, including by staging large-scale attacks in Kabul.