US military says airstrike has killed senior Daesh terrorists in Afghanistan
Several senior members of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group have been killed in a US airstrike in eastern Afghanistan.
General John Nicholson, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, said on Sunday that the air raid had been carried out against hideouts of the terrorists in the northeastern province of Kunar on Thursday.
The strike also killed Abdul Rahman, claimed to have been a provincial leader of Daesh in Afghanistan, which is known as ISIS-Khorasan Province.
Nicholson identified Rahman as the so-called provincial emir of Daesh in Kunar and said he had been a "primary candidate" to succeed Abu Sayed following his death. Abu Sayed was reportedly killed in a strike on his base in Kunar in July.
"The death of Abdul Rahman deals yet another blow to the senior leadership of ISIS-K," Nicholson said in a statement, adding, "He found out just like those before him that there are no safe havens in Afghanistan. We will hunt them down until they are no longer a threat to the Afghan people and the region."
According to the statement, three other Daesh terrorists were among those killed in the strike in Darah-Ye Pech district.
In April, the US military dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb in the American arsenal on an area of eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, known to be populated by Daesh terrorists, according to the US Defense Department.
Afghanistan is still suffering from insecurity and violence years after the United States and its allies invaded the country as part of Washington’s so-called war on terror. The military invasion removed the Taliban from power, but militancy continues to this day.
The war in Afghanistan is the longest in US history with a cost of about $1 trillion. More than 2,400 Americans have died and another 20,000 have been wounded in the country since the invasion in 2001.
US President Donald Trump has been skeptical about the campaign in Afghanistan. US officials have said that Trump's doubts about the war have led to a delay in completing a new strategy in the war-torn country.
Daesh, which is mainly concentrated in Iraq and Syria, has been sustaining heavy losses in battles with national armies and allied forces in those countries in the past months.
The Takfiri group emerged in Afghanistan in early 2015 and has claimed responsibility for some deadly attacks in the country.
Earlier this month, Daesh claimed an attack on a mosque in Afghanistan's western city of Herat that killed 33 worshippers.
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