Afghan Taliban bomber kills six US troops

Attack near Bagram base comes as insurgents threaten to overrun Helmand province in the south.

Afghan soldiers patrol in Helmand province, where the Taliban is pressing an offensive to capture a key district, on December 21, 2015. Noor Mohammad / AFP

Kabul // A Taliban suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed six US soldiers in a brazen attack near Kabul on Monday as the resurgent militant group battled to seize a key southern district in Afghanistan’s opium-growing heartland.

“Six service members died as a result of a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device attack,” the US-led Nato coalition said.

Hours after the attack, three rockets hit the diplomatic district of Kabul where the Taliban launched a suicide attack on a Spanish embassy guesthouse just over a week ago. There was no immediate information on casualties or damage.

The attack on a joint patrol of Nato and Afghan forces near Bagram, the largest US military base in Afghanistan, also injured three others and was claimed by the Taliban.

It was one of the deadliest attacks on foreign troops in Afghanistan this year and coincides with a fierce militant offensive to capture the strategic district of Sangin in Helmand province.

Local residents reported crippling food shortages in the district, long seen as a hornet’s nest of insurgent activity, after the Taliban began storming government buildings on Sunday.

“The Taliban have captured the police headquarters, the governor’s office as well as the intelligence agency building in Sangin,” said deputy Helmand governor Mohammad Jan Rasoolyar.

“Fighting is escalating in the district,” he said, claiming the number of soldiers killed in clashes is “unbelievably high”.

Mr Rasoolyar’s comments come a day after he posted a desperate plea on Facebook to president Ashraf Ghani, warning the entire province was at risk of falling to the Taliban.

The government in Kabul said reinforcements had been dispatched to Sangin, while denying claims of large casualties and rejecting that the district was at risk of being captured.

But trapped residents said roads to Sangin had been heavily mined by insurgents and exhausted soldiers besieged in government buildings were begging for food rations.

The grim assessment bore striking similarities to the security situation that led to the brief fall of the northern city of Kunduz in September – the biggest Taliban victory in 14 years of war.

The fall of Helmand would deal another stinging blow to Afghan forces who have struggled to rein in the ascendant insurgency without the full backing of Nato forces, who ended their combat mission last year.

Sangin, a strategically important district at the centre of Afghanistan’s lucrative opium trade, has been the scene of fierce fighting for years between the Taliban and Nato forces.

British troops fought deadly battles in Sangin for four years to little effect, before US marines replaced them in late 2010 and finally pulled out themselves last year.

“The Taliban onslaught in Sangin is not just a military gain but also a huge propaganda score for the insurgents,” said Haroon Mir, Kabul-based political analyst.

“The British and Americans bled to defend Sangin district and now Afghan forces are suffering the same fate.”

All but two of Helmand’s 14 districts are effectively controlled or heavily contested by Taliban insurgents, officials said.

Insurgents also recently overran Babaji, a suburb of the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, fuelling concern that the city could fall to the insurgents.

Highlighting the gravity of the situation, US special forces have been sent to Helmand in recent weeks to assist Afghan forces, a senior western official said.

This month marks a year since the Nato mission in Afghanistan transitioned into an Afghan-led operation, with allied nations assisting in training local forces.

The US president Barack Obama announced in October that thousands of US troops would remain in Afghanistan past 2016, backpedalling on previous plans to reduce the force and acknowledging that Afghan forces are not ready to stand alone.

* Agence France-Presse