Islamic State’s purported leader in Afghanistan, Abu Sayed Orakzai, also known as Sad Arhabi, was killed, along with ten other fighters in an airstrike in Nangarhar on Saturday night. The National Directorate of Security (NDS) confirmed the death on Sunday.
The airstrike had been carried out during an operation on two Daesh stronghold areas in Khogyani district. Officials did not say whether the airstrike had been carried out by the Afghan Air Force or foreign forces. However, the group’s weapons cache was also destroyed in the airstrike, officials said.
Arhabi was the third leader to have been killed in less than two years. He had succeeded Abdul Hasib Logari in April last year. Logari had succeeded Hafiz Saeed Khan who had died in a US drone strike in 2016.
Daesh had earlier created their stronghold in Nangarhar despite efforts by government and US forces to eliminate their entrenchment. They had become increasingly active behind attacks on Kabul and Jalalabad.
Earlier, Taliban targeted nine rockets near the diplomatic area of Kabul, Afghanistan where President Ashraf Ghani was addressing an Eid prayer ceremony. Afghan officials on Tuesday said fighting broke out between security forces and armed groups in the city’s old quarter, in which at least two people were wounded.
The first rocket landed near the presidential palace after which Ghani said, “If they are thinking the rocket attack will keep the Afghans down, they are wrong.” The second hit a NATO compound site and the US Embassy, according to police official Jan Agha.
Military helicopters fired at fighters holed up near the Eidgah Mosque in the capital’s Reka Khana district, where smoke was rising as clashes were under way, according to AFP news agency.