Afghanistan: US strikes destroy IS branch

Associated Press

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN

Afghanistan said Saturday that recent U.S. airstrikes it assisted destroyed the top leadership of a fledging Islamic State affiliate there, potentially striking a major blow to an insurgent group already targeted by local Taliban fighters.

While U.S. officials declined to confirm it, Afghan authorities said an American airstrike Friday killed Islamic State affiliate leader Hafeez Sayeed and more than 30 other militants. That comes after Afghan officials earlier said another U.S. airstrike killed the affiliate’s second-highest official, Gul Zaman, and six others, including a former Pakistani Taliban spokesman named Shahidullah Shahid who earlier had joined the group.

“With the killings of Hafiz Sayeed, Gul Zaman and Shahidullah Shahid, who were the high-profile figures of Daesh in Afghanistan, we have destroyed the base of ISIS,” said Abdul Hassib Sediqi, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security, using two alternate names for the militant group.

Sediqi offered no photographs or other evidence to show the strikes killed the Islamic State affiliate’s top leaders, though he said Afghan authorities verified a body from Friday’s strike was Sayeed. Militants with the group have not discussed the strikes online.

NATO officials declined to immediately comment on the claim, saying they would issue a statement later Saturday. U.S. Army Col. Brian Tribus, a spokesman for U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, confirmed Americans carried out an airstrike Friday in Nangarhar’s Achin District, but declined to comment further.

NATO and U.S. officials have not commented on the strike that Afghan officials said killed Zaman and Shahid, which they said took place Monday in the same district as Friday’s strike.

The Islamic State group, which holds a self-declared “caliphate” across roughly a third of Syria and neighboring Iraq, has inspired militants across the greater Middle East and Africa to declare allegiance to its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The militants include those in Egypt who purportedly claimed a car bombing early Saturday at the Italian Consulate in Cairo that killed one person.

They also include militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the target of a U.S.-led invasion after the 2001 al-Qaida terror attacks on America.