America's North Shore Journal

Afghan and coali­tion forces searched an enemy encamp­ment last night in the remote reaches of Pak­tya province in an effort to dis­rupt the Haqqani-coordinated flow of for­eign fight­ers and weapons through the Khowst-Gardez Pass.

The force tar­geted the site, about 35 kilo­me­ters south­east of the city of Gardez, after intel­li­gence indi­cated mil­i­tant activ­ity. The force was engaged by small-arms fire from hos­tile mil­i­tants on sev­eral dif­fer­ent occa­sions through­out the oper­a­tion. The force used direct fire and close air sup­port to repel the attacks from militants.

Sev­eral enemy mil­i­tants were killed dur­ing the engage­ment. The force con­tin­ued the search and uncov­ered large muni­tions caches through­out the enemy encamp­ment. All muni­tions were destroyed in place.

The Haqqani net­work remains one of the most lethal Tal­iban orga­ni­za­tions oper­at­ing out of Pakistan's Fed­er­ally Admin­is­tered Tribal Area. Haqqani lead­ers con­duct oper­a­tions in con­junc­tion with other Islamic mil­i­tant groups with sim­i­lar goals and inter­ests. The net­work focuses oper­a­tions against the Gov­ern­ment of the Islamic Repub­lic of Afghanistan and Afghan national secu­rity forces and seeks to expel coali­tion and NATO forces from Afghanistan to main­tain its influ­ence in east­ern provinces.

DVIDS