Security Forces Defuse 20 Landmines, Rescue Lives in Afghanistan

Date: 15 May 2019 - 21:16

News ID: ۶۶۰۱۵

KABUL (Dispatches) – Up to 20 rounds of landmines have been unearthed and foiled in Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar, the country's Ministry of Interior Affairs said Wednesday.
The landmines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) have been planted by anti-government militants for terrorist activities, in Shah Wali Kot district's Charchenar village, where engineering teams of provincial police discovered them, the ministry said in a statement.
Taliban militants usually use landmines and IEDs to target security forces, but the lethal home-made weapons mostly take lives of civilians.
On May 9, four children were killed and five others wounded by landmine explosion in the northern Faryab province, while on May 11, seven children lost their lives and two others injured in a mine blast in the country's eastern Ghazni province.
In an earlier incident, three bomb explosions struck Afghanistan’s eastern city of Jalalabad, killing at least three people and injuring 20 others, local officials say.
Attaullah Khogyani, spokesperson for the governor of Nangarhar, said on Monday that the blasts were caused by explosives placed in the crowded market square in the capital city of the troubled province, which is on the border with Pakistan.
There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. But the Taliban militant group has been active in the province. The Daesh Takfiri terrorist group is also present in the troubled region.
"The nature of explosions is not clear, but it could be IEDs," Nangarhar provincial spokesman, Attaullah Khogyani, was quoted by AFP as saying, using the acronym for improvised explosive devices.
"So far we can confirm three people have been killed and 20 wounded," he added.
In recent years, Daesh has established a foothold in eastern and northern Afghanistan. The terrorist group has mostly been populating Nangarhar, from where it has carried out high-profile brutal attacks at major population centers across the country.
On Tuesday, fighting between prisoners and Afghan policemen during a drug search operation in the country’s largest prison left four prisoners dead and several injured, a government official said.
Violent clashes erupted in two barracks of the sprawling Pul-e-Charkhi prison on the outskirts of Kabul, which houses thousands of inmates, including scores of Taliban militants and members of other hard-line groups.
Nasrat Rahimi, the spokesman for the interior ministry, said four prisoners were killed and 13 prisoners and 20 policemen were injured during the search operation to seize drugs and other illegal substances from the prisoners.