Daesh fighters conduct first attack on Afghan police posts, security forces repulse attack

Hundreds of armed militants loyal to the so-called Islamic State (IS) commonly known as Daesh raided police security checkpoints in Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province on Sunday, a local official said.

"Hundreds of Daesh insurgents attacked police security checkpoints in Achin district of Nangarhar province at 06:00 a.m. local time today," district governor Hajji Mohammad Ghalib told reporters.

According to Ghalib, the newly emerged militants had overrun two checkpoints but police recaptured them after firefight which lasted for a while.

Four police were also injured during the clash, he said, adding several insurgents were also killed and injured during the firefight.

This is the first time that the Daesh fighters have engaged with Afghan security forces.

The eastern Nangarhar province with Jalalabad as its capital, some 120 km east of Kabul, has been the scene of Taliban-led militancy over the past couple of years.

However, local officials have reported the emergence of Daesh fighters in Achin, Kot and Chaparhar districts of Nangarhar province over the past couple of months.

The Daesh outfit, according to media reports, has also announced war against Taliban militants in Afghanistan and so far cases of clash between the two extremist groups have been reported in parts of Nangarhar, southern Zabul and western Farah provinces over the past months.

The attack by IS fighters in Achin district came just after a UN report days ago warned of IS growing presence in Afghanistan and the newly-emerged extremist group is recruiting members in different provinces of the militancy-hit Afghanistan.

Citing Afghan security forces, the report released by UN's al- Qaeda monitoring team stated that around 10 percent of the Taliban insurgents have sympathy with the Daesh fighters.

According to the report, Taliban's former leader Mullah Omar's advisor Abdul Raouf Khadem, who reportedly visited Iraq in 2014, after returning to Afghanistan has formed his own group in Helmand and Farah provinces to start fight for Daesh group in the conflict- ridden central Asian state.

Source: XINHUA