Afghan govt must do better in 2016: UN official, NYPD man among 6 US killed troops
Afghan govt must do better in 2016: UN official, NYPD man among 6 US killed troops
Britain said on Tuesday it had sent military personnel to the southern Afghanistan province of Helmand following reports that the district capital Sangin was on the verge of falling to Taliban forces.
A statement from the British defence ministry did not specify the number deployed, but insisted they would not be engaged in combat. Britain said they were deployed in an advisory role.
London’s Times newspaper reported that a unit of about 30 soldiers from Britain’s elite Special Air Service (SAS) and up to 60 US special forces had been sent to bolster the Afghan forces to defend the town. “These personnel are part of a larger Nato team, which is providing advice to the Afghan National Army,” an MoD spokeswoman said. “They are not deployed in a combat role and will not deploy outside the camp.” The deployments come a year after the US-led Nato formally ended its combat mission in Afghanistan, adopting a training and advisory role to local forces.
Military planes dropped food and ammunition to besieged Afghan forces in Sangin after Taliban insurgents captured large swathes of the opium-growing southern district.
“We are air-dropping food supplies, military equipment and ammunition to support our forces in Sangin,” defence ministry spokesman Moham-mad Radmanesh said.
“Sporadic fighting is going on around the district,” he said, rejecting reports of high military casualties and asserting that the district had not fallen to the Taliban.
Helmand’s governor said Monday the Afghan police were holding out against Taliban fighters who had surrounded their compound and the district governor’s building in Sangin but roads into the town were completely controlled by the Taliban.
He warned the situation risked slipping entirely out of control.Fleeing local residents reported bloody gunfights as the Taliban advanced on the district centre, highlighting a worsening security situation across Afghanistan a year after Nato formally ended its combat operations. His testimony bore chilling similarities to the situation in Kunduz after the Taliban briefly captured the northern city in September
Afghanistan’s government will need to prove itself worthy of international support in the coming year, the UN Security Council has heard, as the country faces a creeping threat from ISIS.
Presenting the council with results of the war-torn nation’s year of transition, UN special representative to Afghanistan Nicholas Haysom looked ahead to 2016, saying: “It is vital that the national unity government demonstrates increasingly its effectiveness, not only to the Afghan people but also donors on whom it is largely dependent.”
A New York City police detective volunteering for his third deployment to war zones was mourned on Tuesday, a day after he and five other Americans were killed in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan near Bagram air base.
“Detective Joseph Lemm epitomised the selflessness we canonly strive for: putting his country and city first,” the New York Police commissioner said. The US has condemned as cowardly the killing of six American soldiers.
