U.S. carried out airstrikes in Afghanistan, says Pentagon

The Taliban in recent days swept across Afghanistan, pushing back the Afghan military and taking over significant swaths of territory as the U.S. nears the ends of its withdrawal.

The U.S. carried out airstrikes across Afghanistan in the last several days as part of an effort to support the Afghan security forces fighting Taliban insurgents, the Pentagon has said. The news of U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan came a day after America’s most senior military officer admitted that the Taliban had gained “strategic momentum,” with their forces now controlling about half of Afghanistan’s more than 400 district centres. The Pentagon, however, refrained from giving any specifics of its airstrikes in Afghanistan. “Without speaking to specifics, I can say that in the last several days, we have acted through airstrikes to support the ANDSF (Afghan National Defense and Security Forces) but I won’t get into tactical details of those strikes,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters on Thursday at a news conference in Washington.