{"id":2981,"date":"2015-10-04T09:52:40","date_gmt":"2015-10-04T09:52:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5917.temp.domains\/~iriacom\/\/news\/?p=2981"},"modified":"2015-10-04T09:52:40","modified_gmt":"2015-10-04T09:52:40","slug":"taliban-militants-seize-control-of-northern-afghanistan-district","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/taliban-militants-seize-control-of-northern-afghanistan-district\/","title":{"rendered":"Taliban militants seize control of northern Afghanistan district"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Taliban militants\u00a0have captured a district\u00a0in Afghanistan&#8217;s northern province of Sar-e-Pol following two days of heavy clashes with Afghan security forces, a local official says.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The militants managed to wrest control of the Kohistanat district of Sar-e Pol on Saturday evening, said Assadullah Khurram, a member of the provincial council.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cThe insurgents had besieged the district center following coordinated attacks from four sides,\u201d Khurram added.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He also said the Taliban, who had earlier closed the roads to Kohistanat, destroyed telecommunication towers in the district following its seizure.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Several requests had been sent to the central government for reinforcements and airstrikes on the militants before the fall of the district, but they were left unanswered, Khurram noted.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said only two villages of the district have remained\u00a0under the government control.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">On September 28,\u00a0Taliban militants overran\u00a0Afghanistan\u2019s northern city of Kunduz, but were later forced to withdraw from much of the city in the face of a government counterattack. Sporadic clashes continue as Afghan troops struggle to clear remaining pockets of the militants.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Kunduz is strategic as it is located on a crossroad that connects key regions of the country. It is also along the country\u2019s border with Tajikistan and could offer the militants the opportunity to establish a base in the country\u2019s north.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Taliban militants\u00a0have captured a district\u00a0in Afghanistan&#8217;s northern province of Sar-e-Pol following two days of heavy clashes with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[124,1],"tags":[9,15,113,10],"class_list":["post-2981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-news","tag-afghanistan","tag-militants","tag-security","tag-taliban"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Taliban-Militant-Afghanistan.jpg?fit=690%2C370&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-M5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2982,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2981\/revisions\/2982"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}