KANDAHAR: Taliban insurgents launched an attack on an Afghan army base that was handed over by Nato forces last month, officials said yesterday.
Camp Bastion, now known as Shorabak, was Britain’s biggest military base in Helmand province.
The attack started on Thursday evening and continued yesterday, the Afghan military said.
“Last night a group of enemy fighters tried to storm Shorabak camp. One detonated a suicide car bomb at the gate and others tried to enter,” Ghulam Farooq Parwani, a senior Afghan army commander at the camp, said.
“In the fighting overnight, there were more suicide attacks and 20 other militants were killed.
“Two injured militants have been cornered and will be hunted down.”
Parwani said five Afghan soldiers had died.
Also yesterday, a suicide attack elsewhere in Helmand killed four people in Nawzad district, and a blast in a mosque in the eastern province of Nangarhar injured 26 people. AFP
