Map of Afghanistan locating Khakrez, where a Taliban attack on military base killed at last 26 Afghan soldiers. AFPAt least 26 Afghan soldiers have been killed and 13 wounded in a Taliban attack on a military base in Kandahar province, the defence ministry said Wednesday, the latest blow to struggling security forces.<\/p>\n
The militants \u201cattacked an army camp in Karzali area of Khakrez district of Kandahar last night,\u201d MoD spokesman General Dawlat Waziri said.<\/p>\n
Afghan soldiers \u201cbravely resisted\u201d, he said, killing more than 80 insurgents.<\/p>\n
Residents in the area described an hours-long attack launched by a 30-strong convoy carrying \u201chundreds\u201d of Taliban who assaulted the base from multiple directions.<\/p>\n
Air support was called in, several residents told AFP, though that was not immediately confirmed by officials. The insurgents claimed the attack via their Twitter account.<\/p>\n
The resurgent Taliban have been ramping up their campaign against beleaguered government forces, underscoring rising insecurity in the war-torn country throughout the warmer weather fighting season.<\/p>\n
Afghan security forces, beset by killings, desertions and non-existent \u201cghost soldiers\u201d on the payroll, have been struggling to beat back insurgents since US-led NATO troops ended their combat mission in December 2014.<\/p>\n
According to US watchdog SIGAR, casualties among Afghan security forces soared by 35 percent in 2016, with 6,800 soldiers and police killed.<\/p>\n
The insurgents have carried out more complex attacks against security forces in 2017.<\/p>\n
In April more than 140 soldiers are believed to have been killed on a base outside the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, one of the deadliest ever Taliban attacks on a military installation.<\/p>\n
While in early March gunmen disguised as doctors stormed the Sardar Daud Khan hospital-the country\u2019s largest military hospital-in Kabul, killing dozens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Map of Afghanistan locating Khakrez, where a Taliban attack on military base killed at last 26 Afghan soldiers. AFPAt least 26 Afghan soldiers have been killed and 13 wounded in a Taliban attack on a military base in Kandahar province, the defence ministry said Wednesday, the latest blow to struggling security forces. The militants \u201cattacked<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4895,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[662],"class_list":{"0":"post-4894","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-26-soldiers-killed-in-taliban-attack-on-afghan-military-base"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}