Afghan and Taliban forces trade blows in Sangin battle

The cops officers chief’s compound remained under attack, & food & ammunition have been briefly provide, Ashna stated. Some Afghan National Army reinforcements arrived via helicopter on Wednesday. Wounded forces have been ferried out.

Sarwar Jan is the commander of a police battalion that has been heavily engaged in Sangin and Marjah, another district mostly in Taliban hands, and he is scathing about Afghan army units he says left his isolated, under-equipped men to fight alone.

The ministry named the dead commander as Mullah Nasir, a confidant of Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour.

Alarmed by the Taliban advances, Britain has sent extra personnel to NATO’s Resolute Support advisory mission in Helmand in a bid to help struggling local forces.

The Taliban statement regarding the British troops deployment said that before entering Afghanistan “they should have studied the history of their ancestors and should have learned a lesson from the repeated defeat”.

RASMUSSEN: Sangin is actually not as strategically important as many people make it out to be. “They are not deployed in a combat role and will not deploy outside the camp”, the statement said.

GOV. MIRZA KHAN, Helmand, Afghanistan (through interpreter): The district is completely under the control of the government security forces.

Mohammad says Afghan reinforcements have arrived in Sangin, backed by special operations forces that were dispatched earlier in the week. I haven’t gotten any reports that they are actually in Sangin, but I also haven’t been able to get any confirmation from the USA forces about what they’re actually doing there.

Recent Taliban gains in Helmand Province have come in spite of an apparent significant numerical advantage among Afghan forces.

Meanwhile, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani tries to desperately reach out to the Afghan Taliban, with the latest reports indicating that a round of dialogue that had been called off may be back on the table.

However, District Governor Asif Nang rejected the claim as “baseless” and said the District Governor’s headquarters, have been relocated. “There is heavy fighting in the district and residents leaving their homes”.

Tensions between Kabul and Islamabad also escalated following a series of deadly attacks across the country and capital Kabul as Taliban launched their summer offensive this year, with Afghan officials slamming Islamabad for sheltering the anti-government armed militants in their soil from where they coordinate and execute attacks in Afghanistan.

“They’re fine as long as they’re being assisted and they’re being provided air cover and things like that by Western forces”.