- Wednesday, April 24, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
THE United States has carried out airstrikes across Afghanistan in the past many days in a bid to support the Afghan security forces fighting the Taliban, the Pentagon has revealed.
The strikes in the violence-ravaged country, which the US-led forces are exiting after a prolonged war lasting for decades, came a day after a top military source in Washington said the extremist group had gained “strategic momentum” with their forces now controlling about half of Afghanistan’s more than 400 district centres.
The Pentagon though did not divulge specifics of the airstrikes.
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“Without speaking to specifics, I can say that in the last several days, we have acted through airstrikes to support the ANDSF (Afghan National Defense and Security Forces) but I won’t get into tactical details of those strikes,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters on Thursday (22) at a news conference.
“But we continue to be able to and we continue to, as the secretary said yesterday, conduct airstrikes in support of the ANDSF,” he said.
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Central Command’s General Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, the commander of the US forces in the region, would retain the authority to call for airstrikes supporting Afghan forces until Washington fully withdraws its troops from the country.
As per a defence official, the US military has conducted approximately six or seven strikes in the past one week, mostly using drones to accomplish the mission, CNN reported. On Thursday, a defence official said the strikes aimed “captured military equipment that the Taliban [were] able to seize from the ANDSF,” the Voice of America reported.
“There were enemy forces, enemy personnel targeted” alongside the captured equipment, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The Taliban have gained control over vast swaths of Afghan territory of late, pushing back the Afghan military as the Joe Biden administration approaches the end of its withdrawal of the US forces.
The US Central Command, which is in charge of Afghanistan, recently said that the withdrawal of US forces is more than 95 per cent complete.
Biden has said the withdrawal would be complete by August end.
