A Taliban ambush killed at least 11 Afghan soldiers in the Herat province of Western Afghanistan on Monday in the latest militant attack since the annual spring-summer offensive began in April.
"The Taliban ambushed a convoy of soldiers in Karukh district of Herat, killing 11 Afghan army soldiers last evening. The soldiers were riding in pickup trucks," Ehsanullah Hayat, spokesman for
Herat’s governor, told Agence France-Presse on Tuesday.
The Taliban has vowed to make this year’s spring-summer offensive, which they named “Azm,” or “determination,” the
bloodiest in decades, The Nation reported. Afghan troops are enduring record-breaking casualties on multiple fronts and are struggling to keep up with the increasing number of militant ambushes.
The growing number of offensives comes during Afghanistan’s first season without NATO military support. After 13 years, NATO ended its combat mission in Afghanistan last December and although a few follow-up troops remain, their role is only to train and support local Afghan forces. A foreign officer was among the 11 killed in the
Monday Taliban ambush, according to the BBC.
A separate arms incident occurred Monday in Charikar in Parwan province where demonstrators protested the destruction of an ammunition cache that foreign troops destroyed late the night before. NATO admitted their mission was "to destroy a cache of ammunitions that could be used to conduct attacks against Afghans and coalition forces,” said a spokesman, according to The Nation.
However, the cache dated back to Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and the protestors claimed that NATO had neglected to even warn local Afghan authorities of the raid.
“The people got angry because they (foreign forces) detonated the cache at midnight while they were sleeping," Mohammad Zaman Mamoozai, Parwan police chief general, said, according to The Nation. Conservative Afghans treat these kinds of middle-of-the-night raids with contempt, as citizens view them as an “invasion” of women and children, The Nation noted. Demonstrators allegedly lit tires on fire and were chanting anti-America slogans.
Parwan province houses Bagram airfield, one of Afghanistan’s largest foreign bases that is a frequent Taliban target.
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