Terrorist ISIL Takfiris planning to attack northern Afghanistan towns: Officials

Afghan officials say members of the Takfiri Daesh militant group are planning to launch attacks against a number of towns in the country’s southern province of Nangarhar.

Haji Ghalib, governor of the Achin district in the troubled province, said on Monday that Daesh extremists are currently in a defensive mode and sporadically engage in exchanges of gunfire with Afghan security forces.

He added that Daesh militants, among them a number of foreign nationals, have fled the districts of Momand Dara and Abdul Khel to Bati Kot, Dur Baba and Nazyan districts after Afghan government troopers launched an offensive against the extremists.

“They (Daesh militants) want to carry out hit-and-run attacks in the districts they have fled to, and their aim is to shift the attention of security forces on something else. Nevertheless, we are aware and we have enough forces in all the related areas,” Ghalib pointed out.

Meanwhile, Colonel Hazrat Hussain Mashriqiwal, a spokesman for the Nangarhar provincial police department, said seven Daesh terrorists were killed and eight others wounded during the latest skirmishes in Achin district on Sunday.

He also confirmed that Daesh militants have sneaked into several Nangarhar districts and are planning attacks.

“There are other border districts near Achin, where they can easily have movements. They can cross into other districts and carry out attacks, but our forces have the ability to fight them,” Mashriqiwal commented.

Nangarhar has been witnessing a rise in the number of Daesh terrorists in some of its districts in recent months.

On June 16, the Afghan militant group, Taliban, warned Daesh ringleader Ibrahim al-Samarrai aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi against “waging a parallel insurgency in Afghanistan.”

Taliban asked the Daesh leader to keep his men out of Afghanistan by withdrawing his support for those elements that are recruiting young militants in Taliban strongholds.

Afghanistan is gripped by insecurity nearly 14 years after the United States and its allies attacked the country in 2001 as part of Washington’s so-called war on terror. Although the attack overthrew the Taliban, many areas across Afghanistan still face violence and insecurity.