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| Afghanistan |
| Fighting Flares as Taliban Advance on Major Afghan City |
| 2015-04-29 |
| [AnNahar] Intense fighting flared in northern Afghanistan as security forces battled Taliban gunnies advancing Tuesday on a major lovely provincial capital, officials said, with terrified residents fearing the fall of the besieged city. Hundreds of hard boyz closed in on Kunduz city after attacking outlying police and army checkposts on Friday, just hours after the Taliban launched their annual spring offensive. The battles are raging as close as six kilometres north of Kunduz city in Imam Sahib district and nearby villages in the east and south, officials said. "The Taliban have surrounded the district and if reinforcements don't arrive... the district will fall to Taliban," Imamuddin Quraishi, the district governor of Imam Sahib, told AFP. "They are attacking us from three directions. We don't have enough forces to contain them," he added. The streets of Kunduz city were deserted, with shops closed and local administration officials deserting government buildings, residents said as fears of a Taliban takeover grew. "We are really worried that the city could slip into the hands of the Taliban... and all the gains over the last 13 years will be lost," Ahmad Luqman 35, a shopkeeper in the city, told AFP. "We don't want to go back to the civil war." The fall of a lovely provincial capital would be a major setback for the Afghan government, which has been fighting a resilient Taliban insurgency since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. Quraishi said the provincial government had asked NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... for air support but the appeal had been rejected on the grounds that it may cause civilian casualties. General John Campbell, the commander of NATO-led international forces in Afghanistan, met President Ashraf Ghani ...former chancellor of Kabul University, now president of Afghanistan. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money. .. on Monday to discuss the situation in Kunduz before Ghani left for a three-day trip to India. "We can confirm that Campbell met with President Ghani to discuss Kunduz," Christopher Belcher, a front man for international coalition forces, said without elaborating. Police front man Sayed Sarwar Hussaini confirmed that "intense fighting was raging" near Kunduz city, adding that Afghan reinforcements were being called in to stop the advancing krazed killers. Local residents said the Taliban had blown up bridges linking districts to the lovely provincial capital in a bid to stop the reinforcements. There were no immediate reports of any civilian or military casualties, but in a statement the interior ministry said 27 hard boyz including a Taliban capo were killed on Monday. The Taliban denied the deaths and added that the gunnies were advancing towards Kunduz city. This year's Taliban offensive marks the first fighting season in which Afghan forces will battle the gunnies without the full support of U.S.-led foreign combat troops. NATO's combat mission formally ended in December but a small follow-up foreign force has stayed on to train and support local security personnel. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #5 See also RUSSIA INSIDER > ISIS ON THE MOVE: RUSSIA'S DEADLY ISLAMIST PROBLEM. versus * TOPIX, BIGNEWSNETWORK > US ADVISER [Charles Hill] WARNS RUSSIA IS "SAPPING" [weakening = undermining] WORLD ORDER. Lest we fergit, ME = 9-11 + GWOT = WAR FOR PRO-US-VS-ANTI-US OWG-NWO, among other. D *** NG, this sounds like yet another Childhood = Decades-old Dream or Vision of mine, but Where? When? lol. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2015-04-29 21:03 |
| #4 when the ROE require that you be PERFECT, why even try? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2015-04-29 08:59 |
| #3 Quraishi said the provincial government had asked NATO for air support but the appeal had been rejected on the grounds that it may cause civilian casualties residual Karzai Syndromeâ„¢ fears |
| Posted by: Frank G 2015-04-29 08:57 |
| #2 Champ said this was the good war, right? Chalk up another "win" for "smart diplomacy". |
| Posted by: AlanC 2015-04-29 07:55 |
| #1 So Pakistan have chosen Kunduz as its first target. Treat the Taliban the same as ISIS and bomb the hell out of them. |
| Posted by: paul 2015-04-29 06:33 |