Reinforcements backing Afghan troops in battle for Sangin

Afghan forces have started receiving finally in the town of Sangin in Helmand province as intense fight continues against Taliban attackers who said to have taken over major portions of the town.

Afghanistan’s embattled security forces needed worldwide military help, especially air support, which would help reduce casualties, Stanekzai told reporters.

From the start of operations in October 2001, 456 British forces personnel or MoD civilians were killed in Afghanistan.

District governor Haji Suliman Shah has been airlifted from the district headquarters along with 15 wounded security force members, it was reported.

“An hour later we recaptured that building and now we have it”, claimed Akhtar Muhammad, a police commander in Sangin district.

The war in Helmand, blighted by a huge opium harvest that helps fund the insurgency, underscores worsening security across Afghanistan a year after North Atlantic Treaty Organisation formally ended its combat operations.

“The Helmand battle is not easy because the province has a long border, is a core of opium production, and our enemies are well-equipped and deeply involved in the smuggling of drugs”, he said.

“They are not deployed in a combat role and will not deploy outside the camp”, the statement said.

The fight for Sangin has been particularly ferocious, with officials saying that only the army base was still in government hands until Tuesday.

Before the strikes, the Taliban already held three Helmand districts and moved freely outside the main populations, centers exercising control over strategic transportation routes.

Defence select committee chairman Julian Lewis said British forces must be able to respond more flexibly to extremists in Afghanistan as well as in Iraq and Syria.

Meanwhile US planes launched two air strikes on Taliban positions shortly before midnight on 23 December, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation spokesman said.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said although a small number of troops have been sent back to shore up Afghan forces against a resurgent Taliban, none of those sent will be engaged in combat. It provides training, advice and assistance – as well as substantial funding – to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces. The crisis in Helmand has piled pressure on the government of President Ashraf Ghani, following the fall of the northern city of Kunduz in September, which Taliban fighters seized and held for several days.

Captain Beattie, who was awarded the Military Cross for his bravery in Afghanistan, said unless Britain stepped in and helped the Afghans then the country would be a “failure”.

Flanked by Interior Minister Noorul Haq Olumi, Stanikzai also confirmed that foreign militants in the ranks of Lashkar-e-Tayeba, al-Qaida and the so-called Islamic State or Daesh from Pakistan, Chechen and other countries have been fighting alongside Taliban in Helmand province.