At least 50 senior Taliban commanders were killed in a US artillery strike in Afghanistan’s southern province of Helmand, a US military spokesman said on Wednesday.
The attack on a meeting of commanders in the district of Musa Qala in Helmand, one of the heartlands of the Taliban insurgency, was a significant blow to the insurgents, said Lt. Col. Martin O’Donnell, spokesman for US forces in Afghanistan.
He revealed that a weapon system known as the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, which is capable of firing GPS-guided rockets, destroyed a command-and-control position that was a known meeting place for high-level Taliban leaders.
“It’s certainly a notable strike,” he said, adding that several other senior and lower level commanders had been killed during operations over a 10-day period this month.
The May 24 rocket artillery attack in the Musa Qala district of Helmand province was announced by the US military last week, but without a public estimate of the numbers killed.
O'Donnell said that because of the large number of leaders killed and their involvement in a range of attack planning, the impact of the HIMARS strike "will be felt beyond Helmand province."
He called it an example of how the US military is using expanded authorities granted as part of the Trump administration's new regional strategy for fighting the Afghanistan war, allowing US forces to take a more active role in combat.
While the strike by an artillery rocket system would disrupt Taliban operations, it would not necessarily mean any interruption to the fighting, O'Donnell said.
The Taliban dismissed the report as “propaganda” and said the attack had hit two civilian houses in Musa Qala, killing five civilians and wounding three.
“This was a civilian residential area, which had no connection with the Taliban,” spokesman Qari Yousaf Ahmadi said in a statement.
US officials have sought to compel the Taliban to enter peace talks by increasing the military pressure on them.
Last week, a US government watchdog group said the administration's revamped strategy has made little progress against the Taliban insurgency, leaving the country a "dangerous and volatile" place nearly 17 years after the US invaded.
