10 troops killed in Afghan army base attack

By Shadi Khan Saif

KABUL, Afghanistan

Taliban in Afghanistan attacked a military base in southern Kandahar province, killing at least 10 troops, officials said Tuesday.

Samim Khpalwak, spokesman for the provincial government, told Anadolu Agency the Afghan National Army’s (ANA) base in Arghandab district came under the Taliban attack late Monday.

Capt. Ahmad Sadique, spokesman for the ANA’s 205-Thunder Corps, confirmed that ten soldiers were killed in the attack.

Arghandab is a remote district at around a distance of 300 miles (483 kilometers) from the capital of Kabul in the south.

“It was an armed assault, we have dispatched a high-level team from the army corps to investigate this attack," he said.

The attack commenced around midnight and ended on Tuesday morning.

This assault is part of the Taliban’s annual spring/summer offensives.

The Taliban’s spokesman Zabehullah Mujahid said they killed 35 soldiers, destroyed six vehicles and confiscated a huge cache of arms and ammunition in the attack.

He said that the militants took away four soldiers with them.

Usually, the Afghan National Police (ANP) has been boring the brunt of such attacks, but this is among the few recent attacks that targeted the army.

On April 21, the Taliban stormed the headquarters of the ANA in the north at a time when the soldiers were either having lunch or performing the Friday prayers in a mosque inside the heavily guarded compound.

The hours long clashes left up to 150 soldiers dead.