Afghan forces kill 8 Taliban militants over attack on Ghazni army base
Afghanistan says its forces have killed the Taliban mastermind of an earlier car bomb attack on an army base, and seven other militants, in an overnight airstrike in the eastern province of Ghazni.
"The mastermind behind yesterday's terrorist attack on the base was killed along with seven other terrorists," the Defense Ministry said in a statement on Monday.
The militant, identified as Hamza Waziristani, is said to be a Taliban from the Pakistani border region of Waziristan, according to a military spokesman Fawad Aman.
The attack on the army base occurred on Sunday morning, when a bomber detonated “a Humvee vehicle which was full of explosives” close to a public protection unit in Ghazni.
Th attack killed at least 30 people and injured 24 others, director of Ghazni hospital Baz Mohammad Hemat said, adding all of them were security personnel.
The attack was the worst targeting the country’s security forces in recent months.
Violence continues to take a heavy toll in Afghanistan even as government negotiators and the Taliban have been engaged in peace talks in Qatar, in an effort to end nearly two decades of war.
The intra-Afghan talks began in the wake of a deal reached between the United States and the Taliban in Doha back in February, but progress has so far been slow.
Under the Taliban-US deal, Washington promised to pull out all its troops by mid-2021 in return for the Taliban to stop their attacks on US-led occupation foreign forces in Afghanistan.
The deal was intended to result in the reduction of violence, but Taliban militants have continued to stage deadly attacks against Afghan security forces and civilians.
According to recent official data, Taliban bombings and other assaults have increased 70 percent since the militant group reached the deal with Washington.
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