Top Al-Qaeda commander Asim Omar killed in US-Afghan raid on Taliban hideout
A TOP Al-Qaeda commander was killed in a joint raid between US and Afghan forces on a Taliban hideout.
Asim Omar was killed alongside six fellow terror group members in an aerial strike, according to Afghanistan’s National Directorate for Security.
The airstrikes in southern Helmand province were launched on September 23.
However at least 40 civilians – including people attending a nearby wedding – were also killed in the strikes.
Omar was the head of Al-Qaeda operations in South Asia.
A large warehouse of supplies and equipment used by the terror group was also destroyed.
A statement said: “They had been embedded inside the Taliban compound in the Taliban stronghold of Musa Qala.”
Many of the civilians killed were women and children.
At the time, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani, said: “We are saddened and devastated to hear that civilians have lost their lives in an incident in Helmand despite President Ghani’s repeated call for extra cautions in conducting military operations.”
The Taliban are currently at its strongest in the region since it was overthrown from power in 2001.
The group is staging near-daily attacks across Afghanistan and is currently active in more than half the country.
Leaders have vowed to fight on “for a hundred years” after Donald Trump scrapped peace talks.
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Last month, US and Taliban negotiators struck a draft deal that could lead to a drawback in US troops from America’s longest war.
But a wave of Taliban violence has cast a long shadow over the deal.
US Marine General Kenneth McKenzie, who oversees American troops in the region, said: “It is particularly unhelpful at this moment in Afghanistan’s history for the Taliban to ramp up violence.”