Afghan insurgents gaining as Trump rolls out war plan

 Taliban insurgents overran the government headquarters of a district in northern Afghanistan on Monday, the latest in a string of losses for Kabul, just hours before President Trump was to unveil his long-delayed strategic plan for handling the nearly 16-year war.

The headquarters in Khamab District in the province of Jawzjan was taken by insurgents on Monday morning, said the spokesman for the Afghan National Army’s commando units, Ahmad Jawid Salim, who said Afghan forces planned to recapture it. The Taliban also said on their website that they had taken the district.

It was the sixth place in Afghanistan to fall to the Taliban in the past month — five districts and a strategic valley — even as casualties and armed clashes have risen to their highest levels of the war. On an average day, 31 members of the Afghan national security forces are killed, as well as nine civilians, according to data from a variety of official sources. Taliban casualties are not known.

Read the whole story from The New York Times.

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