KABUL, Dec 6 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Over 600 Daesh militants, including Pakistanis, Central Asians and Iranians, surrendered over the past two weeks in Afghanistan, said the country’s Defense Ministry.
Days after Afghan officials announced clearing the long-held bastions of Daesh in the country’s east, along the disputed Durand Line border with Pakistan, the Defense Ministry said 18 more militants, accompanied by 24 women and 31 children, surrendered on Friday.
With this, the total number of those associated with the group surrendering surpassed 600, it said.
The ministry said the robust clean-up operation forced militants to surrender.
The local Tolo News reported that among them were militants from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Russia and Iran as well as Kurdish people.
The Interior Minister Masoud Andrabi said the local Daesh, the so-called Islamic State-Khorasan or IS-K, has been “completely defeated and driven out” of their strongholds in the eastern province of Nangarhar.
Addressing a new conference in the province, Andrabi said the militants are striving for alternate bastions in the country, but the security forces are well-prepared to fight them.
However, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed blamed the government forces for “rescuing Daesh fighters who were under the siege of the Taliban” in the area.
Meanwhile, a fresh batch of Daesh militants surrendered in Jalalabad city, capital of eastern Nangarhar province on Thursday, a provincial governor said.
“A total of 180 members of Daesh group renounced violence and surrendered to Nangarhar’s National Directorate of Security (NDS) in Jalalabad city at midday on Thursday,” governor Shah Mohammad Miyakhil told reporters.
The surrendered militants who were active in Achin district handed over 94 rounds of AK-47 and heavy machine guns to the country’s national intelligence agency NDS.
Militants affiliated to the hardliner Daesh outfit emerged in Achin and in the neighboring Nazyan and Khogyani districts in early 2015 and have been challenging the security forces in the relatively violent Nangarhar province since then.
Government security forces launched a massive crackdown against the Daesh in Achin early last month, forcing more than 1,000 militants and their family members to surrender to security forces.
The Daesh outfit has yet to make a comment.
