At least 22 police were killed in a Taliban ambush in western Afghanistan, a health official said Monday, November 26, in another blow to Afghan forces already suffering record casualties.
The attack on the police convoy in Farah province on Sunday also wounded at least two officers, said Shir Ahmad Weda, director of the public hospital in the provincial capital.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in a WhatsApp message, saying 25 police were killed and four wounded.
“Four vehicles were destroyed and a large quantity of weapons were seized,” Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, a spokesman for the militants, added.
The Taliban have stepped up attacks on Afghan security forces in recent months, inflicting record casualties even as efforts to engage the militants in peace talks intensify.
On October 18, the Taliban killed Kandahar province police chief General Abdul Raziq in an attack at a high-level security meeting in Kandahar also attended by General Scott Miller, commander of Resolute Support and U.S. Forces Afghanistan.
The death toll among Afghan soldiers and police is nearing 30,000 since the start of 2015, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani revealed this month – a figure far higher than anything previously acknowledged.
In a recent report, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction cited the NATO Resolute Support mission in Kabul as saying this summer’s toll had been worse than ever for Afghan forces.
According to U.S. Forces – Afghanistan, there were 23 reported ‘green-on-green’ insider attacks against Afghan National Defense and Security Forces personnel from May 17 to August 26, 2018, bringing the 2018 total to 56 insider attacks, SIGAR said in its October quarterly report.
With reporting from AFP