Ayaz Gul
VOA News
April 13, 2018
Taliban insurgents have assaulted a security outpost in western Afghanistan, killing at least 11 government security forces.The Thursday night attack took place in Shindand district in the province of Herat, which borders Iran.
District Governor Shukrullah Shaker told VOA the insurgent raid also wounded four security personnel.
The so-called law and order police post was manned by Afghan police personnel when it came under attack, the governor said. Shaker also confirmed that the district chief of the law and order police contingent, Sayed Sharafudin Allawi, was among the slain personnel.
A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, claimed in a statement sent to media that the attack in Shindand left more than 20 Afghan security personnel dead and insurgents also took away four armored military vehicles, or Humvees.
Earlier, a Taliban attack killed a district governor and seven police personnel in Afghanistan’s southeastern province of Ghazni. Afghan media, however, reported the death toll was at least 16 and mostly soldiers were among the victims.
The fighting came as the United Nations cautioned that the number of conflict-related civilian casualties in the first three months of 2018 remained at the same high level recorded for the same period last year.
Officials in Ghazni said scores of heavily armed insurgents participated in Thursday’s coordinated assault on the governor’s office in Khawaja Omari and they overran the district center.
Provincial police chief Mohammad Zaman told VOA the timely arrival of reinforcements and air support enabled Afghan forces to push Taliban assailants out of the area after hours of intense clashes.
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