Eight soldiers killed in Taliban attack in Badakhshan

At least eight Afghan soldiers were killed in a Taliban attack on Saturday night in Badakhshan province, sources said.

According to the sources the Taliban carried out an attack on a regional army checkpoint in the center of Warduj district and killed at least eight soldiers.

Six other soldiers were wounded in the attack, sources added.

The sources said the Taliban destroyed all the equipment at the checkpoint.

The Taliban claimed in a newsletter that eight soldiers had been killed and 15 wounded in the attack.

Local officials confirmed the Taliban attack but said nothing about casualties.

This comes after a new quarterly report by Washington’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) documented an 82 percent increase in insider attacks on Afghan government security forces in the first quarter of this year, resulting in 115 personnel killed and 39 wounded.

SIGAR reported last week that the overall Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) casualties were also substantially higher than during the same period last year.
SIGAR is not allowed to include full ANDSF casualty data because U.S. forces in Afghanistan keep it classified at the request of the Afghan government.