The Afghan Special Forces killed 18 Taliban militants during the operations in South-eastern Ghazni province of Afghanistan, like reported by khaama.com.

According to a statement released by Special Operations, the Afghan Special Forces conducted the operations in Kamal Khel, Gawada Khel Bala and Payeen Villages of Andar district.

The statement further added that the Special Forces killed 18 Taliban militants, wounded 3 others and arrested 3 suspected militants during the raid.

The Speical Forces also confiscated and destroyed some weapons including 2 PKM machine guns and 8 landmines during the operations, the Special Operations Corps added.

An airstrike in North-eastern Takhar province killed the shadow judge and district district chief of Taliban, the Afghan military said, like reported by khaama.com.

According to a statement released by 217th Pamir Corps, the Afghan Air Force conducted the airstrike in Khwaja Ghar district of Takhar on Sunday night.

The statement further added that the airstrike killed Haji Sabir, the shadow judge of Taliban for Takhar and Burhani Gajar, the shadow district chief of Taliban Namak Aab district.

The 217th Pamir Corps also added that the airstrike killed 11 other militants and wounded more.

The Taliban group has not commented regarding the killing of the shadow judge and district chief of the group so far.

Six people, all civilians, were killed and two others wounded as a roadside bomb struck a car in Afghanistan’s eastern Kapisa province on Tuesday, Xinhua news agency quoted provincial police spokesman Abdul Shaeq Shurash as saying Wednesday according to bernama.com.

The roadside bomb, according to the official, was planted by the Taliban militants on a road in Nijrab district and struck a car Tuesday evening, killing six commuters including women and children on the spot and injuring two others.

Taliban militants who are active in parts of Kapisa province with Mahmud-e-Raqi as its capital 65 km north of Kabul haven’t commented on the report.

The Taliban launched a multi-pronged attack on a district headquarters in a remote district in northern Afghanistan early on Tuesday, killing at least 11 policemen and triggering a gunbattle that was still under way hours later, officials said according to trtworld.com.

The attack on the Shortepa district headquarters in northern Balkh province started early in the morning, according to Munir Ahmad Farhad, spokesman for the provincial governor.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the militants had overran the compound.

Farhad denied the claim, saying Afghan security forces were still in control of the district headquarters and that reinforcements were on their way to Shortepa.

The district is very remote, said Mohammad Afzel Hadid, head of the Balkh provincial council, adding that he fears the casualty toll could rise further unless reinforcement arrives promptly.

“I hope reinforcements arrive sooner rather than later, it is a remote area with very poor communications,” he said.

Taliban attacks have continued unabated even as Afghanistan held presidential elections on Saturday and the US-Taliban talks over a peace deal collapsed last month.

There were at least 68 attacks by the Taliban across the country during election day, most of them rockets fired from distant outposts.

At least five people were killed, including one policeman, and scores more were wounded.

Despite upgraded security, authorities said 431 polling stations stayed closed because it was impossible to guarantee their security since they were either in areas under Taliban control or in places where insurgents could threaten nearby villages.

Results of the vote are not due for weeks.

The Taliban control or hold sway over roughly half the country now and they had warned voters not to participate in the election.

Malaysia has arrested 15 people, mostly foreigners from neighbouring Indonesia, on suspicion of having links with the Islamic State militant group, police said according to reuters.com.

Malaysia has been on high alert since January 2016, when gunmen allied with Islamic State carried out a series of attacks in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia.

The suspects were arrested in several raids across the country between July and September, Malaysia’s police counter-terrorism chief Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay said in a statement.

The first case involved a 25-year-old Indonesian palm plantation worker in the state of Sabah in Borneo, who police believe had acted as a facilitator for a family of five that carried out a suicide attack on a church in Jolo, in the southern Philippines in December 2018.

Ayob said the suspect had also allegedly channelled funds to the Maute group, which seized control of the lakeside town of Marawi in the Philippines for five months in 2017, a conflict that killed over 1,100 people.

Police said they also arrested 13 other Indonesians and a Malaysian in separate raids on suspicion of carrying out activities in support of Islamic State, which included promoting the group’s ideology and recruiting new members on social media, with the aim of launching attacks in their two countries.

Police arrested one Indian national separately for being a member of the Sikhs For Justice group that has been outlawed in India. The suspect has since been deported, Ayob said.

Malaysia has arrested hundreds of people in the past few years for suspected militant links.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan admitted that the Pakistan army and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) trained the Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups in Afghanistan, like reported by livemint.com.

Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in New York, Khan also said his country committed “one of the biggest blunders” by joining the US in its hunt for the perpetrators of September 2001 terror attacks. The previous governments “should not have pledged what they could not deliver,” Khan said, referring to former army chief and president Pervez Musharraf’s decision to side with the US.

“The Pakistan army, the ISI trained the Al-Qaeda and all these groups to fight in Afghanistan,” he said in response to a question on whether there was an enquiry conducted into how AlQaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden came to be hiding in Pakistan.

US special forces took out bin Laden in a top secret mission in May 2011 in Abbottabad, a military garrison town in Pakistan.

“(So) There had to be links (with the Al Qaeda) because they trained them. Now as I said, after 9/11 when we did a 180 degree turn and went after those groups. Not everyone (in the Pakistani military) agreed with this. The army people did not agree with this and so there were more insider attacks in Pakistan. There were two attacks on General Musharraf which were from inside,” Khan said.

“The (Pakistan) Army chief, the ISI chief had no idea about this (bin Laden being in Pakistan). I know this because they were listening to their conversation the night the raid took place and they said so. So if there was (any knowledge of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad) it took place at lower levels,’ he said.

On Pakistan joining the US-led War on terrorism in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks, Khan said “Pakistan took a real battering in this,” he said, adding that Islamabad should have stayed neutral in the conflict.

“In the 1980s, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Pakistan, helped by the US, organised the resistance to the Soviets. The ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) trained militants who were invited from all over the Muslim world for jihad against the Soviets,” Khan said. “And so we created these militant groups to fight the Soviets… Jihadis were heroes then. Come 1989, Soviets leave Afghanistan, the US packs up and leaves Afghanistan… And we were left with these groups,” he added.

“Then comes 9/11, and Pakistan again joins the US in the war on terror and now we are required to go after these groups as terrorists. They were indoctrinated that fighting foreign occupation is jihad but now when the US arrived in Afghanistan, it was supposed to be terrorism,” Khan said.

He said there could be no military solution in Afghanistan, adding he will ask US President Donald Trump to resume peace talks. “For 19 years if you have not been able to succeed, you are not going to be able to succeed in another 19 years,” he added.

Pakistan was one of the three countries along with the Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that recognised the Taliban government in Afghanistan before the US invasion in 2001. After the US invasion, following the 9/11 attack, Pakistan supported the US forces against the Taliban.

The Afghan Special Forces killed or detained 11 Taliban and ISIS militants during the operations in Wardak, Balkh and Nangarhar province, like reported by khaama.com.

The military officials said Tuesday the Special Forces killed 5 Taliban militants during a raid in Nerkh district of Wardak.

The officials further added that the Special Forces also arrested 5 Taliban militants and destroyed a cache of weapons during the same operation.

Furthermore, the Special Forces destroyed a cache of weapons during a raid in Chimtal district of Balkh.

The Special Forces arrested a militant of ISIS Khurasan during a raid in Deh Bala district of Nangarhar, the officials added.

Indian Army Chief General Bipin Rawat on Monday said Pakistan has reactivated Balakot very recently and about 500 men were waiting to infiltrate into India.

“Balakot has been reactivated by Pakistan very recently. That shows that Balakot has been affected. It had been damaged and destroyed. And that is why people have got away from there and now it has been reactivated,” he told reporters at the Officers Training Academy here.

He said around 500 infiltrators were waiting to infiltrate into the country.

“…some action had been taken by Indian Air Force and now they have got the people back there,” he said.

The decision came in the backdrop of India’s decision to abrogate Article 370 and bifurcate the state into two Union territories.

Indian national security establishment had confirmed the reactivation of the Balakot facility, that is training 40 jihadists. The top levels of government were informed too.

According to intelligence sources, JeM may not only target J&K but also Gujarat and Maharashtra under a new name to avoid international scrutiny, Hindustan reported.

Indian Air Force (IAF) had launched the pre-emptive air strike on Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on 26 February.

12 Mirage 2000 fighter jets launched an airstrike on Jaish-e-Mohammed training camp in retaliation against Pulwama terror attack in which 40 CRPF jawans were martyred.

According to Indian counter-terror operatives, anti-India terror groups that remained dormant since Pulwama and its aftermath were reactivated after August 5, when India decided to read down Article 370.

Moreover, the very next day, JeM commander Mufti Abdul Rauf Asghar met his contacts in the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, and drafted a jihadist response to India’s move in Kashmir.

To create unrest in the Valley, Pakistan-based terror outfits have been asked to use Kashmiri-origin terrorists, say analysts. Few sleeping outfits like the Al Umnar Mujahideen led by Mushtaq Zargar alias Latram were also revived in this context.

People, who were closely observing Pakistan’s action, said JeM has started advanced daura tarbiya courses, a religious programme, for 50 jihadists.

News agency IANS had reported that Islamabad reactivated nearly a dozen terror camps in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK), close to the International Border along Jammu and Kashmir after New Delhi announced to scrap Kashmir’s special status.

The Jaish-e-Mohammed has been banned in Pakistan since 2002, but it continues to train terrorists in Pakistan occupied Kashmir and provide them weapons to create troubles in Jammu and Kashmir.

Having maintained close relations with the Taliban and al Qaeda, it has carried out several attacks primarily in Jammu and Kashmir, news agency ANI reported.

A Taliban truck bomb killed at least 20 people and wounded 95 others when it exploded near a hospital in Southern Afghanistan, an official said on Thursday.

Two provincial officials stated that the attack targeted the hospital, but the Taliban in a statement claiming the bombing said the group had targeted an Afghan security force building, according to Reuters.

At least 48 people have been killed and dozens more wounded in two separate attacks on Tuesday in Afghanistan – one at a campaign rally by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and the other in the capital, Kabul.

Across Afghanistan, attacks have continued as the country prepares for a presidential election later this month.

The Taliban has warned that its fighters will intensify their campaign against the Afghan government and foreign forces to dissuade people from voting in the September 28 vote.

Last week, US President Donald Trump abruptly ended talks with the Taliban seeking to reach a deal on the withdrawal of thousands of American troops from Afghanistan in exchange for security guarantees from the group.

The talks, which did not include the Afghan government, were intended as a prelude to wider peace negotiations.

The Taliban promised Washington during months of negotiations that the United States would never again be attacked from Afghan soil. Such a pledge would have included al-Qaida, which planned the 9/11 attacks from inside Afghanistan, like reported by miamiherald.com.

Yet jihad, or holy war, and a shared history continue to bind the two militant groups, and there’s no evidence of a break in relations between the long-time allies. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had said the Taliban agreed to cut ties with al-Qaida as part of peace negotiations, which President Donald Trump abruptly called off last week.

The al-Qaida leadership still vows allegiance to Taliban chief Maulvi Hibatullah Akhunzada, and al-Qaida has been growing stronger in recent years, according to analysts and experts. The group has overcome setbacks from the establishment of a rival Islamic State affiliate in eastern Afghanistan and from U.S. drone strikes that had reduced its numbers.

The militants even established a subsidiary in the region called al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent, with ties to jihadi groups as far away as Myanmar.

“Since 2017, the group has recovered meaningfully,” said Asfandyar Mir, a fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.

“There is no discernible evidence of a break or disjuncture between al-Qaida and the Taliban,” Mir said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Instead, at least parts of the Afghan Taliban, such as the Haqqani Network, and al-Qaida continue to actively collaborate.”

In the 1980s, the U.S. was among those who encouraged hundreds of Arab fighters to travel to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Afghan mujahedeen, or holy warriors, against the former Soviet Union’s forces there, financed in large part by Saudi Arabia. Today, many of these mujahedeen make up the Taliban leadership, while others are in power in the U.S.-backed Afghan government. As the war was coming to a close in 1988, many of the Arab fighters united to follow the wealthy Saudi leader Osama bin Laden to create the jihadi group al-Qaida, which later sought to confront the U.S.

Over the years, al-Qaida has had many friends in Afghanistan, some of whom are now in high places, such as Abdul Rasool Sayyaf, a powerbroker in Kabul.

These links were detailed by a retired CIA operative who worked closely with the U.S.-backed mujahedeen. The operative, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his involvement in covert operations, said Sayyaf was the closest al-Qaida ally in Afghanistan.

Sayyaf even arranged Afghan citizenship for more than 800 Arab al-Qaida fighters after the mujahedeen took power in 1992. However, the mujahedeen soon turned their guns on each other, sending the country into civil war that killed thousands. The corruption and killing gave rise to the Taliban movement led by mujahedeen, many of whom were village clerics, who used a repressive brand of Islam to establish their control. They took power in 1996 until their ouster in 2001.

The Taliban, despite 18 years of fighting the U.S. and its allies, now control or hold sway over half of Afghanistan and are at their strongest since the U.S. invasion.

U.S. government reports suggest the number of al-Qaida militants has also grown in recent years, while allied groups such as the Pakistani Taliban, who found refuge in Afghanistan after an onslaught by the Pakistan military, are also gaining in strength.

“The largest concentrations of active foreign terrorist fighters” are in Syria and Afghanistan and most are aligned with al-Qaida, according to a United Nations report in July.

Some among the Taliban have sought to distance themselves from al-Qaida, but they have come up short explaining al-Qaida’s allegiance to their leader, its relationship to the Taliban’s Haqqani network and the ties of key leaders to al-Qaida.

Mir, the Stanford fellow, also said key Taliban shadow governors have had long-standing ties to al-Qaida. The Taliban appoint governors who act as political heads in provinces they control.

Exactly how the Taliban would enforce their guarantee that Afghanistan would not be used to harbor terrorists with a global agenda was never made public, and U.S. peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad refused to give details.

After the collapse of the Taliban deal earlier this month it’s not clear if the Taliban gave Washington any information on where al-Qaida leaders, including bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahri, are hiding.

Some say it’s not a mystery.

“Pakistan and most certainly the Taliban leaders know very well where they are,” said retired Pakistani army Gen. Talat Masood. Although this allegation implicates his former employer, Masood has been retired for some time and has been consistently critical of what he calls “the extraordinarily warped philosophy of the Pakistan army” to support militants as a counter to Indian influence in the area.

After years as a fugitive, bin Laden, the architect of the 9/11 attacks, was tracked to Pakistan’s garrison town of Abbottabad, barely 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the capital, Islamabad, and was killed by U.S. Navy SEALS in 2011.

On this month’s anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, bin Laden’s successor al-Zawahri released a video message appearing relaxed, though aging. The video was produced by the group’s as-Sahab Media Foundation, which would seem to be operating unencumbered.

“His message serves to remind us that 18 years after 9/11, al-Qaida’s senior leadership remains alive and well,” said Bill Roggio, editor of the Long War Journal, published by Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which tracks terrorist groups.

Roggio said in an interview that a-Zawahiri and his media arm, as-Sahab, “remain in operation and likely are based in Pakistan or Afghanistan.”

An al-Qaida video released in May, when the Taliban were negotiating anti-terrorism guarantees with the U.S., claimed an attack on an Afghan army convoy in eastern Paktika province and sought “to emphasize its alliance with the Taliban,” according to the Long War Journal.

Additionally, Mir said al-Qaida’s media arm regularly pumps out propaganda, mostly directed at Afghan and Pakistani audiences. On occasion, it promotes allied groups such as the al-Qaida-linked Ansar Ghazwa-tul Hind, operating in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir. The disputed Himalayan region has been the flashpoint of two previous wars between nuclear-armed neighbors Pakistan and India.

“While al-Qaida’s ability to conduct a 9/11-style attack has been diminished, this does not make it any less a threat,” Roggio said. “Al-Qaida possesses an extensive network across the globe — one far greater than that which existed prior to 9/11, with its branches fielding small armies to wage its local insurgencies.”