Mastermind of recent fatal attack in Afghanistan killed

Afghanistan’s National Directorate for Security (NDS), which is the country’s main intelligence service, said in a statement on Wednesday that the terrorist commander, who was only identified as Noman, had been killed in an air raid on Tuesday night.

“Noman, along with seven others, was targeted after being identified by the NDS forces in an operative task,” the statement said. “NDS will follow the terrorist group and kill them all.”

The Taliban militants attacked the military base in Maidan Wardak on Monday.

Reuters on the same day cited a senior defense source as saying that 126 Afghan security forces had been killed and scores wounded in the Taliban attack.

On Tuesday, however, NDS offered a different tally, saying that 36 people had been killed and 58 had been injured.

The assault followed an earlier attack, on Sunday, on a convoy of security forces in the country’s eastern province of Logar, where the Taliban killed at least eight security forces and wounded several others.

The Taliban militants have stepped up attacks on security forces in recent months, though they have recently also been engaged in talks with the United States for a possible compromise.

Taliban’s five-year rule over at least three quarters of Afghanistan came to an end in the wake of a US-led invasion in 2001, but the militant group still continues to attack government and civilian targets as well as foreign forces still present on Afghan soil.

The militant group has so far refused to deal directly with the government in Kabul, which it says it does not recognize.

KD