U.S. airstrikes have destroyed an Islamic State-operated radio station in a remote part of eastern Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday.
"Voice of the Caliphate" radio was destroyed by two U.S. airstrikes,
according to a U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of
anonymity because he was not authorized to brief media on the subject.
Army Col. Mike Lawhorn, spokesman for the U.S.-NATO mission in
Afghanistan, said U.S. forces conducted two "counter-terrorism
airstrikes" late Monday in Achin district, in the eastern Nangarhar
province, without elaborating.
An IS affiliate has emerged in Afghanistan over the past year, with a
military presence in districts near the border with Pakistan. The radio
station was broadcasting illegally across Nangarhar, calling on fighters
to join the group and threatening journalists in the provincial
capital, Jalalabad.
Afghan officials had said they believed the broadcasts were coming from
mobile facilities that could be moved easily back and forth across the
mountainous border.
The spokesman for the Nangarhar governor, Attaullah Khogyani, said the
strikes had also killed 21 IS supporters, including five who were
working for the radio station.
The station was set up in late 2015, following months of fierce fighting between IS group militants and the Taliban,
who also maintain a significant presence in the region. Although IS and
the Taliban both want to impose a harsh version of Islamic rule, they
are bitterly divided over leadership and strategy, with the Taliban
narrowly focused on Afghanistan and IS bent on establishing a worldwide
caliphate.
Radio is a powerful medium in Afghanistan, where most people do not have
televisions and only 10 percent of the population has access to the
Internet. Nearly everyone has access to radio, with around 175 stations
operating across the country.
The U.S. State Department recently added the IS Afghan affiliate to its list of foreign terrorist organizations.
Elsewhere in the country, three Afghan army officers died when their
vehicle hit a roadside bomb late Monday in the Gereshk district of
southern Helmand province, according to the district's administration
chief, Mohammad Sharif. He said the dead included Gen. Atta Mir, a
brigade commander in Gereshk.
In the northern city of Kunduz, a secretary for the provincial
governor's office was shot dead near his home on Monday evening, the
governor's spokesman, Abdul Wasi Basel, said.
He said that no one had claimed responsibility for the killing of Mohammad Zarif.
The Taliban seized Kunduz for three days last year, and only fully
withdrew after a two-week counteroffensive that devastated much of the
city.
No comments:
Write comments