Afghan forces reclaim village from Taliban

By Shadi Khan Saif

KABUL, Afghanistan (AA) – At least 50 Taliban militants were killed and 20 injured on Tuesday, as security forces reclaimed a village in Afghanistan’s northern Sar-i-Pul province from the Taliban, an official said.

Nasratullah Jamshedi, spokesman for the 209-Shaheed Corps of the Afghan army, said a counter-terrorism operation was launched to take control of Mirza Olang valley, where Taliban and Daesh militants had killed 50 civilians and torched a number of houses, two weeks ago.

He did not confirm the number of soldiers who had been killed in the operation.

In a separate incident, a security official was killed in a suspected suicide attack in northern Kunduz province, said Safar Mohammad Akbari, the provincial police spokesman.

Daesh on Tuesday claimed responsibility for killing 54 civilians in Sar-i-Pul.

Earlier this week, Taliban had claimed responsibility of the attack. Qari Yosuf Ahmadi, the Taliban spokesman, denied there had been a massacre, saying they had only killed "pro-government militia" members.

Speaking about the nexus of Taliban and Daesh in Sar-i-Pul, Ashiqullah Yaqoob, a Kabul-based analyst, said a number of Taliban fighters have joined Daesh. “It is not unusual for them to unite against government forces from time to time.”

Pro-Daesh militants in Afghanistan are mostly concentrated in eastern parts of the country bordering Pakistan’s tribal areas, and up in the northern provinces such as Jawzjan, Sar-i-Pul and Faryab provinces bordering the Central Asian states of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.