At least 19 insurgents were killed and one was arrested during a series of coordinated operations over the past 24 hours by the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), the Ministry of Interior (MoI) said in a statement to ToloNews .

The operations were conducted in Herat, Khost, Maidan Wardak, Helmand, Sar-e-Pul, Kunduz, Takhar, Faryab and Jowzjan provinces, the statement said.

“During the same 24 hour period, Afghan National Police discovered and defused two rockets and three different types of IEDs placed by enemies of Afghanistan for destructive activities in Kabul and Faryab provinces,” the statement noted.

The MoI, however, did not comment on whether any security force members were harmed in the operations.

A heavy explosion rocked Jalalabad city in eastern Nangarhar province leaving at least four people dead and over others wounded, wrote Khaama.

The incident took place after a suicide bomber detonated a Vehicle-borne Improvised Explosive Device (VBIED) while the foreign forces convoy near the Jalalabad airport.

According to provincial hospital officials the victims of the incident are all civilians.

A senior Taliban commander has been killed with nine of his companions in an aerial strike in eastern Laghman province wrote Khaama.

A statement issued by the media office of Laghman province states that the strike was conducted on a group of insurgents in the mountainous area of Bomby in Dawlat Shah area around 11:30 AM today.

The statement adds that Noor Shah Chapaw, Zakir and Sadullah were among the ones killed in the strike.

According to the statement Noor Shah Chapaw was the so-called Taliban governor for Dawlat Shah District and general commander for Dawlat Shah, Alishang and Badpakh districts.

The statement further states that the group was involved in several terrorist activities in the ar

The US has defended a proposed arms deal with Pakistan worth nearly a billion dollar to sale attack helicopters and missiles, saying the weapons would be used for internal counter-terrorism operations, wrote DeccanHerald. .

“This proposed sale of helicopters and weapons systems will provide Pakistan with military capabilities in support of its counter-terrorism operations inside the country,” State Department Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf told reporters.

“They are for internal counter-terrorism uses inside Pakistan – so to be very clear about that, going after terrorists inside their own country,” she said. The USD 952 million deal approved by the State Department involves the US supplying Pakistan with 15 AH-1Z attack helicopters, 1,000 Hellfire missiles, engines, targeting and positioning systems and other equipment.

“We obviously have many ways of monitoring how weapons we sell to any country are used in terms of end use and how we monitor that. That’s obviously something we care very deeply about,” Harf said when asked whether the US is confident that Pakistan is going to use the aid for the purposes in which it is being sold and not against India. “Do you trust the Pakistanis?” she was asked.

“This isn’t about trust. This is about being able to see where our weapons go, see what they’re used for, and that’s something we are confident we are able to do,” she said.
“We have a very close counter-terrorism relationship with Pakistan for very good reasons. There’s still a serious threat in Pakistan from terrorists who have either attacked the US or American soldiers in Afghanistan, who have tried to plot and plan against the West, including the US,” she said.

“Obviously, the remnants of core al-Qaeda are mainly in the tribal areas of Pakistan. So the Pakistanis have a serious problem still, and that’s why we’re trying to help them. This is in our national security interest to do so,” she said.

In a statement, the Defense Security Co-operation Agency yesterday said the proposed sale of helicopters and weapon systems will provide Pakistan with military capabilities in support of its counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations.

Pakistan’s volatile northwest has been fiercely battling homegrown Taliban insurgency that was revived in 2004. The country’s army have been engaged in a full-scale offensive against the militants in North Waziristan since last year.

Five suspected Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants – including its Karachi chief – were killed and two Rangers personnel were injured in a clash between security forces and miscreants in Kemari area, Express News reported on Wednesday.

Rangers raided a house on information of militants planning to target the city’s Expo Centre in a bomb attack.

During the search, militants fired at Rangers personnel and hurled hand grenades. The clash left TTP’s Karachi commander Ilyas Kashmiri and his four accomplices dead.

A large cache of arms was recovered from the premises, comprising hand grenades, Kalashnikovs, bullets and ammunition.

Security forces have intensified their efforts to rid the city of terrorism under the implementation of the National Action Plan.

Afghanistan today vowed action against Taliban-allied Uzbek insurgents after they posted a video purportedly showing the beheading of a former Afghan soldier, highlighting their apparent tilt towards Islamic State group, wrote Outlookindia.

A local commander of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which has so far held a low profile in Afghanistan, was recently reported to have pledged support to the Islamic State jihadists.

The Taliban have seen defections to IS in recent months, with some insurgents voicing their disaffection with their one-eyed supreme leader Mullah Omar who has not been seen since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

IMU’s footage, circulating on social media, bore the hallmarks of IS execution videos that have brought global notoriety to the group that captured swathes of territory straddling Iraq and Syria.

It shows a kneeling man who identified himself as an Afghan soldier and two masked men — one of them brandishing a knife.

Just before the killing the gunmen warned that the captive ethnic Hazaras would meet the same fate if the government did not agree to their demands, which were not specified in the video.

The footage could not be independently verified by AFP and it was not clear whether the gunmen were referring to the high-profile abduction of 31 Hazara minorities in February in southern Afghanistan.

The kidnappings triggered speculation that the men had been seized by Afghan insurgents who have pledged allegiance to IS.

“The (National Directorate of Security) has started its investigation into this inhuman and un-Islamic action and will find the perpetrators and bring them to justice,” the Afghan intelligence agency said on Twitter, referring to the execution.

“This video is not linked to the kidnapping of 31 of our countrymen,” it said, adding that the victim was a former soldier.

The video marks something of a departure for IMU, said Borhan Osman, a researcher with the Afghanistan Analysts Network in Kabul.

“It used to operate in coordination with and under the eyes of the Taliban,” Osman told AFP.

“Now IMU leaders appear to be tilting heavily towards the Islamic State and have started openly expressing doubts about the status of Mullah Omar’s life and active leadership.”

“Copying IS and even ultimately allying with it is a likely future trajectory for IMU in the region,” Osman said.

The Afghan government has raised the ominous prospect of the IS making inroads into the country, though the group has never formally acknowledged having a presence in Afghanistan.

Mullah Ramazan, a well-known Haqqani commander, was among six insurgents killed in an Afghanistan National Army (ANA) operation in southern Paktika province on Monday afternoon, local officials said to Tolonews.

The operation was launched in the Barmal district to clear insurgents and Mullah Ramazan was among the six insurgents killed, a spokesman for the Provincial Governor, Nabiullah Peerkhil confirmed.

“The Haqqani commander was involved in insurgency activities in the past eight years in Paktika,” he said.

However, he did not provide details on whether the ANA suffered any casualties during the operation.

Paktika province, which borders Pakistan, has seen frequent insurgent activity in the past.

Eight Iranian border guards were killed during a skirmish with rebels in Iran’s southeastern frontier bordering Pakistan in the latest of a series of violent incidents involving Sunni militants opposed to Tehran’s Shi’ite regime, wrote JP.com.

In a Tuesday interview with with the Sistan-Balochestan deputy governor, Iran’s state IRNA news agency reported that “armed terrorists entered Iran from Pakistan…killing eight soldiers before fleeing back to Pakistan.”

The fire-fight, which took place in the Negur district was the most high-profile encounter between Sunni Iranian rebels and the Tehran’s forces since 14 border guards were killed in a similar attack attributed to Jaish-ul Adl in October of 2013.

Another of the Islamic Republics media outlets, PressTV,  reported that three of the attackers had been killed before their flight back across the border.

Iran has been engaged in a quiet but bloody battle against a number of groups which it considers terrorists but who claim to fight for Sunni rights in the region. Many have found relative safety in majority Sunni Pakistan.

On Monday Iran’s Revolutionary Guard claimed to have destroyed a militant cell belonging to one of these groups, adding that the cell had been affiliated with foreign espionage organizations.

In 2014 Iran and Pakistan had agreed to bolster bilateral cooperation against militant groups in the area as well as take on narcotics and human trafficking taking place on their shared borderland.

According to The Express Tribune, a Pakistani newspaper, last week Pakistani forces raided hide-outs of suspected Balochi militants, killing six and discovering weapons and materials used for making suicide-vests.