Taliban fighters took control of a remote district near the Pakistani border on Saturday, scattering the forces of the Afghan government, who said they had run out of ammunition.
A force of Taliban attackers entered the district of Barg-e-Matal at about 8am on Saturday, after the local police retreated, Deputy Police Chief Colonel Sherzad said in an interview.
“Our forces retreated because they did not have enough ammunition,” he said, echoing other officials in the area. Only 24 hours before, Afghan officials had claimed that they had driven the Taliban from the district into neighboring Pakistan.
The fall of Barg-e-Matal, while embarrassing to the Afghan government, is not necessarily strategically significant. The district sits on an isolated valley in Nuristan Province, one of the most inaccessible places in the country.
The US, which provided limited air support over the past few days in clashes with the Taliban, provided none on Saturday.
General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, has emphasized protecting population centers, even at the expense of writing off smaller inaccessible areas.
Barg-e-Matal would seem to qualify. Last year, a group of US soldiers spent two months in the valley to help the Afghan government clear and hold the area and pulled out in September.
Last month, the Americans closed their outposts in the nearby Korengal Valley, an equally remote place, after four years of trying to pacify local Afghans. Local Taliban quickly moved in.
Afghan officials said the Taliban fighters in Barg-e-Matal were Pakistanis, other foreigners and members of al-Qaeda, although they offered no evidence to support that assertion.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS