Afghan officials have publicly identified several of the Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) members who were killed during an operation in Helmand province earlier this week. The raid quickly proved to be controversy, as some reports indicate that dozens of civilians perished during the clash in Musa Qala, a known Taliban stronghold.

A total of nine militants including a Taliban shadow district chief have been killed in the eastern region of the war-battered country over the past 24 hours, officials said Tuesday.

US and Afghan Special Forces carried out a raid in Helmand specifically targeting a senior al-Qaeda leader who was hiding in a bomb factory which was producing explosive devices possibly to be used against voters in the impending presidential election, security officials have claimed.

The Taliban took credit for killing three troops in a green-on-blue attack Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Monday afternoon, but an U.S. Forces-Afghanistan spokesman fired back at the claims on Twitter, clarifying that the only injuries sustained were non-life threatening.

Since the partition of India in 1947, which established the two independent states of India and Pakistan, Pakistan has infiltrated soldiers into Indian Kashmir, assisted anti-Indian Muslim terrorists in Jammu-Kashmir and sponsored many murderous operations inside India proper.

Afghanistan must choose a new president this week, but every election over the last decade has been riddled with fraud and marred by violence, and fears are growing that the poll on may be the worst yet.

A senior U.S. defense official in Afghanistan’s capital city Kabul on Friday said Islamic State fighters were hiding among pine nut harvesters when a U.S. drone strike in eastern Afghanistan killed at least 32 people.

Afghan authorities say Taliban militants have suffered heavy casualties in the latest security operations in several provinces across the country.

A Taliban delegation met China’s special representative for Afghanistan in Beijing to discuss the group’s peace talks with the United States, a spokesman for the Islamist insurgency said.

At least 39 people killed and 90 wounded in a suicide attack carried out by the Taliban in the southern city of Qalat.