The Taliban has killed 43 government troops at a military base in southern Afghanistan, the Defense Ministry reports. Nine soldiers were wounded and six remain missing, according to a statement from the ministry.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/S. Marai
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At least 43 government soldiers have died after an attack claimed by the Taliban on a military base in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, officials said — the third such assault on a security installation this week. Troops killed at least nine of the group's fighters, according to the Defense Ministry.
"A group of insurgents attacked an army base in [the] Chashmo area of Maiwand district in Kandahar province," the ministry announced in a statement released on Thursday, adding that the assault had wounded nine of the base's 60 soldiers and six remained unaccounted for.
Image: DW
Afghanistan's largest TV broadcaster, Tolo TV, reported that two suicide attackers had used stolen military vehicles to carry out the attack starting late Wednesday. Confirming the assault, Haji Sayed Jan Khakrezwal, the head of Kandahar's provincial council, spoke of a motor bomb attack followed by armed clashes in the Cheshmo area of Maiwand.
A growing trend
In a text to media outlets on Thursday, the Taliban claimed to have killed 60 members of the government's security forces. In recent months, the group has attacked military installations on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. Government forces have struggled to combat the resurgent Taliban since US and NATO forces formally concluded their combat mission at the end of 2014.
On Tuesday morning, the Taliban attacked a police training center in the eastern province of Paktia, killing 48 people, including about 20 civilians and the police chief. Elsewhere in Afghanistan, a Taliban ambush in the northern Balkh province late Wednesday killed six police, according to Shir Jan Durani, spokesman for the provincial police chief.
The attacks come as German officials have attempted to push a campaign of deportations to Afghanistan for people found guilty of crimes including drug dealing and petty theft or considered potential threats to national security. The United States has recently bolstered its own forces in Afghanistan.
Deportations from Germany to Afghanistan
Mid-December 2016 saw the first collective deportation of 34 rejected Afghan asylum seekers from Germany to Kabul – the first of many. Germany halted the flights in late May 2017, but has now restarted them.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Balk
By the planeload
On September 12, 2017, a flight left Germany's Düsseldorf airport for Afghanistan, carrying 15 rejected asylum seekers in what is the first group deportation to the country since a deadly car bomb blast near the German embassy in Kabul in late May. The opposition Greens and Left party slammed the resumption of deportations to Afghanistan as "cynical."
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/B. Roessler
Fighting for a chance
In March 2017, high school students in Cottbus made headlines with a campaign to save three Afghan classmates from deportation. They demonstrated, collected signatures for a petition and raised money for an attorney to contest the teens' asylum rejections - safe in the knowledge that their friends, among them Wali (above), can not be deported as long as proceedings continue.
Image: DW/S.Petersmann
'Kabul is not safe'
"Headed toward deadly peril," this sign reads at a demonstration in Munich airport in February. Protesters often show up at German airports where the deportations take place. Several collective deportations left Germany in December 2016, and between January and May 2017. Protesters believe that Afghanistan is too dangerous for refugees to return.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Balk
From Würzburg to Kabul
Badam Haidari, in his mid-30s, spent seven years in Germany before he was deported to Afghanistan in January 2017. He had previously worked for USAID in Afghanistan and fled the Taliban, whom he still fears years later – hoping that he will be able to return to Germany after all.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/C.F. Röhrs
Persecuted minorities
In January of the same year, officials deported Afghan Hindu Samir Narang from Hamburg, where he had lived with his family for four years. Afghanistan, the young man told German public radio, "is not safe." Minorities from Afghanistan who return because asylum is denied face religious persecution in the Muslim country. Deportation to Afghanistan is "life-threatening" to Samir, says change.org.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/H. Wiedl
Reluctant returnees
Rejected asylum seekers deported from Germany to Kabul, with 20 euros in their pockets from the German authorities to tide them over at the start, can turn to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) for assistance. Funded by the German Foreign Office, members of the IPSO international psychosocial organization counsel the returnees.
