Thaindian News

Kabul, Mar.16 (ANI): The US and UK commanders have said that the special forces deployed in Helmand province of Afghanistan, are winning their battle against Taliban insurgents.

They said that Taliban leaders are being “decimated” by special forces in the province where over 9,000 British troops are have been deployed.

Commanders have said the coming few months will test the strength of the Taliban-led insurgency, The Guardian reports.

Major General Richard Mills, commander of nearly 30,000 British and US troops in Helmand said: “We will see what the Taliban bring back to the battlefield in the spring.”

In support to the comments, Brigadier George Norton, Mills’s deputy, said the coming months would reveal how resilient the insurgency is.

General John Lorimer, chief military spokesman for the British chief of defence staff, said, 1st battalion Royal Irish Regiment in Helmand discovered large caches of weapons and equipment for making improvised explosive devices.

Over 500 soldiers of the regiment took part in an assault on what was described as an insurgent haven in Helmand’s Nad-e-Ali district and it was regiment’s biggest operation.

Mills did not responded when asked when the Afghan army and police would take responsibility for Helmand’s security.

The Afghan president Hamid Karzai, has said he will announce the start of a process of transferring responsibility for security to Afghan forces, on March 21

The number of UK and US forces in Afghanistan is likely to reduced later this summer, after a much-hoped-for success against the insurgency.

The number will gradually reduce by the end of 2014, when the main task of all foreign troops will be to train Afghan security forces. (ANI)