{"id":6461,"date":"2015-12-24T09:01:09","date_gmt":"2015-12-24T17:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/afghan-troops-rushed-to-area-under-attack\/"},"modified":"2015-12-24T09:01:09","modified_gmt":"2015-12-24T17:01:09","slug":"afghan-troops-rushed-to-area-under-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/afghan-troops-rushed-to-area-under-attack\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghan troops rushed to area under attack"},"content":{"rendered":"

KABUL, Afghanistan<\/strong> \u2014 The Afghan military has rushed reinforcements to a southern district threatened for days with takeover by the Taliban, the country\u2019s defense minister said Wednesday as he appealed for stepped-up NATO assistance and military support.<\/p>\n

In a besieged army base in the embattled district of Sangin, an Afghan soldier described a dire situation, saying a handful of Afghan troops inside were fighting to the last, trying to keep the Taliban out.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, at an air base outside of Kabul, U.S. troops saluted fallen comrades during a memorial ceremony Wednesday for six American soldiers killed in a Taliban attack this week.<\/p>\n

The six died when a suicide bomber drove his explosives-laden motorcycle into a joint NATO-Afghan patrol near the Bagram Air Field on Monday. Two U.S. troops and an Afghan were also wounded in that attack \u2014 the deadliest day for American troops in Afghanistan since May 2013.<\/p>\n

As fighting in the Sangin district of southern Helmand province continued Wednesday, Afghan army and police arrived to help security forces pinned down for days in the besieged area, said the minister, Masoom Stanekzai.<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters in the Afghan capital, Kabul, Stanekzai said that the country\u2019s overstretched security forces need the international military coalition\u2019s help, especially air support, which would help reduce casualties.<\/p>\n

Sangin is an important poppy-growing district in Helmand, which borders Pakistan and sits on transport routes for drugs, arms and other lucrative contraband.<\/p>\n

The Taliban, whose intensified war against Afghan forces has not slowed down with the colder season, have been besieging it for days and have nearly completely run over the district.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Helmand battle is not easy because the province has a long border, is a core of opium production, and our enemies are well-equipped and deeply involved in the smuggling of drugs,\u201d he said. \u201cThese factors complicate the battle for Sangin.\u201d<\/p>\n

By mid-afternoon Wednesday, the Taliban spokesman for southern Afghanistan, Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, tweeted that \u201cSangin district has completely collapsed to the Taliban\u201d and that insurgents have captured Afghan soldiers and ammunition.<\/p>\n

The insurgents are prone to exaggerating its battlefield successes, and Kabul officials denied that Sangin had fallen.<\/p>\n

However, Helmand\u2019s deputy governor Mohammad Jan Rasulyar said all lines of communication with Sangin had been cut and there was no immediate information available on the situation there.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe already said that our forces are weak and need backup but because we have no communication with our forces, we don\u2019t know whether the Taliban have captured Sangin or not,\u201d Rasulyar added.<\/p>\n

An Afghan army soldier, Yaseen Zamarai, reached by The Associated Press over the phone inside the besieged base in Sangin said the Taliban were outside the building and had been pushed back after entering once earlier in the day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need help, we can\u2019t hold them for much longer,\u201d Zamarai said, his voice cracking. \u201cIt\u2019s not that we are afraid of death, but we didn\u2019t think that our brothers would leave us like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Britain has sent a small contingent of soldiers to Helmand as advisers under the new NATO mandate to train the Afghan forces. The return of British troops is poignant, as they suffered more than 100 of their 456 fatalities during Britain\u2019s 13-year Afghanistan combat mission in Sangin.<\/p>\n

Afghanistan\u2019s security forces have been taking on the Taliban alone, following the end of the international combat mission last year. The U.S. and NATO have around 13,000 troops in the country, most of them operating under the training mandate.<\/p>\n

Districts across Helmand have been threatened by the Taliban in recent months. The fight for Sangin has been particularly ferocious, with officials saying that only the army base was still in government hands until Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Supply lines were cut, preventing ammunition and food from reaching government forces, and roads around the district center mined, officials have said.<\/p>\n

Stanekzai said that with the arrival of new troops to the area, the battle would be reinvigorated and \u201cthis should help cut the number of casualties, and provide much-needed logistical support.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Taliban have fought hard across the country this year, stretching Afghan forces as they have taken hold of some districts, if only for a few hours or, in the case of the northern city of Kunduz, three days that sent waves of concern through Afghans who had believed the insurgency was not strong enough to take major urban centers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KABUL, Afghanistan \u2014 The Afghan military has rushed reinforcements to a southern district threatened for days with takeover by the Taliban, the country\u2019s defense minister said Wednesday as he appealed for stepped-up NATO assistance and military support. In a besieged army base in the embattled district of Sangin, an Afghan soldier described a dire situation, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":6462,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-6461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6461"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=6461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}