NATO, Afghan airstrikes hit Taliban targets in Sangin

The besieged Afghan province of Sangin remains under government control after the U.S. conducted air strikes overnight, officials said.

(AP Photos/Rahmat Gul, File). 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.

Afghanistan government forces have lost control of the centre of the town of Sangin in Helmand province after days of fierce fighting, media reports said on Wednesday.

The six died when a suicide bomber drove his explosives-laden motorcycle into a joint NATO-Afghan patrol near the Bagram Air Field on Monday.

A Taliban statement said that before “interfering” in Afghanistan, Britain should have ‘studied their ancestor’s history, to learn from it. If they learned lessons from their repeated defeats in Afghanistan, they wouldn’t come to invade us.

To support the Afghan army, London has made a decision to send a “small contingent” of British soldiers who arrived in Helmand, said the British Ministry of Defence.

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”. The town is an important poppy-growing area and sits on lucrative transport routes for drugs and weapons.

There are unconfirmed reports that British special forces are also advising Afghan troops around Sangin. “These factors complicate the battle for Sangin”.

A spokesman for the Taliban said on Twitter “Sangin district has completely collapsed to the Taliban” but the government has denied the claim.

The deputy governor of Helmand said all lines of communication with the town had been cut and there was no information as to what was happening inside.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said insurgents had overrun the whole of Sangin, pinning down Afghan forces in a military base where trapped soldiers reported dire conditions.

A unit of British soldiers is now based at Camp Shorabak, though they are “fewer than 20”, according to Col Michael Lawhorn, spokesman for the worldwide forces in Afghanistan. “It’s not that we are afraid of death, but we didn’t think that our brothers would leave us like this”.

The Taliban statement listed barriers to peace negotiations, including United Nations sanctions on individual Taliban figures which were extended this week, and the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan, with specific mention of the British troops that arrived in Helmand on Wednesday to provide support for Afghan forces battling in Sangin.

Security has worsened across the country as the Taliban test the mettle of Afghan security forces after the end of the worldwide combat mission previous year. The U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation have around 13,000 troops in the country, a lot of them operating under a training mandate.