KABUL
After four days of intense fighting between hundreds of Taliban fighters and local pro-government militia the mountainous eastern district of Dangam, the Afghan security forces have finally managed to reach the scene of the clashes to repel the militants, said a local official.
According to Dangam district administrator Maulvi Inayatullah, fresh Afghan troops arrived on Thursday to support locals who have endured for the past four days attacks from scores of militants and an overwhelming majority of Pakistani rebels.
“We had been desperately waiting for the Afghan National Army since Saturday, the militants wanted to take control of the whole district”, he told The Anadolu Agency.
Dangam shares the Durand line border with Pakistan’s Malakand district, the former refuge of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. The group’s notorious leader, Maulana Fazlullah, who is suspected of having masterminded the Peshawar school attack, is allegedly hiding in the Afghan province of Kunar.
Some nine rebels have been reported dead during the ongoing fighting.
Earlier, the militants had killed five locals, wounded 40 others and had torched 40 houses.
Inayatullah said that Afghan security forces were moving forward without any obstacles and pushing militants back. Maj. Haroon, spokesman of the 201st Sailab Corps, said that Afghan forces had secured control of all check posts that were being attacked by militants.
Meanwhile, the Taliban claimed having blown up several of the security forces’ check posts and having inflicted heavy casualties to the Afghan forces.
Following a vicious attack on an army-run school in Pakistan in which 142 people – mostly children- perished, the Pakistani Army Chief Gen. Raheel Sharif and the director-general of the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, Gen. Rizwan Akhtar made a surprise visit to Kabul on Wednesday.
The Pakistani army’s public relations wing said the Afghan president Ashraf Ghani and John F Campbell, the commander general of the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, in Afghanistan assured Islamabad of the elimination of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan sanctuaries on Afghan soil.
“Vital elements of intelligence” regarding the Peshawar attack were shared with Afghan authorities, confirmed the Pakistani army.
Raheel Sharif warned that Pakistan would be compelled to end anti-terror cooperation with Kabul if “decisive and prompt” action was not taken against the Tehreek-e-Taliban hideouts and the group’s fugitive chief Fazlullah inside Afghanistan, The Express Tribune, a Pakistani newspaper, reported quoting official sources.
According to the Afghan Presidential Palace media release, Ghani expressed his condolences to Sharif and the nation of Pakistan with regards to the innocent lives lost in Tuesday's horrific attack on the military-run school in Peshawar.
He said that the attack witnessed in Peshawar was also an "attack on Afghanistan, Muslims and humanity," emphasizing that the insurgents were the same who had attacked the youth in the Afghan district of Yahya Khail in Paktika province and the Lycee Istiqlal High School in Kabul.
"These terrorist attacks should not only be condemned with words, but a strong stance should be taken against those behind it," the statement quoted Ghani as saying. "It is time for Afghanistan and Pakistan to jointly and honestly fight against terrorism and extremism."
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