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Taliban launches Afghanistan offensive after US pullout deadline

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The armed group launches assaults across Afghanistan after a missed US deadline to withdraw troops.

Afghanistan’s security forces have fought back a Taliban offensive in southern Helmand province, officials and residents have said, as the armed group launched assaults around the country after a missed United States deadline to withdraw troops.

Attaullah Afghan, the head of Helmand’s provincial council, said the Taliban had launched its offensive on Monday from multiple directions. The group attacked checkpoints around the outskirts of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, taking over some of them, he said.

Afghan security forces had carried out air strikes and deployed elite commando forces to the area. The group had been pushed back but fighting was continuing on Tuesday and hundreds of families had been displaced, he added.

“There was a thunderstorm of heavy weapons and blasts in the city and the sound of small arms was like someone was making popcorn,” Mulah Jan, a resident of a Lashkar Gah suburb, told Reuters news agency on Tuesday.

“I took all my family members to the corner of the room, hearing the heavy blasts and bursts of gunfire as if it was happening behind our walls,” he said.

Families that could afford to leave had fled, but he had been unable to go, waiting with his family in fear before the Taliban was pushed back.

A Taliban surge in Helmand would have particular resonance, as the opium-growing desert province was where US and British forces suffered the bulk of their losses during the 20-year war.

The US pullout

As part of the pullout, US forces handed over a base in Helmand to Afghan government troops two days ago.

In Washington, the US military said that about two to six percent of the withdrawal process had been completed so far.

United States Central Command said that the equivalent of about 60 C-17 aircraft worth of material had been moved out of Afghanistan and more than 1,300 pieces of equipment had been handed over to be destroyed.

The Afghan defence ministry said that in addition to Helmand, security forces have been responding to attacks by the Taliban in at least six other provinces, including southeastern Ghazni and southern Kandahar in the past 24 hours.

The defence ministry said just over 100 Taliban fighters had been killed in Helmand. It did not provide details on casualties among Afghan security forces. The Taliban did not immediately comment.

The May 1 deadline for US troops to pull out was agreed to last year under former President Donald Trump. The Taliban rejected President Joe Biden’s announcement that troops would stay on past the deadline but withdraw over the next four and a half months.

The deadline has been met with a surge in violence, with a car bomb in Logar province killing almost 30 people on Friday evening.

On Monday, at least seven Afghan military personnel were killed when the Taliban set off explosives smuggled through a tunnel the group had dug into an army outpost in southwestern Farah province.

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