WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th December, 2019) The US-led coalition has made progress in the fight against the Islamic State terrorist organization's (IS, banned in Russia) so-called Khorasan Province group in Afghanistan, US Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad said in a statement.
Last month, Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Alexander Bortnikov warned of the surging nexus in Afghanistan between the Islamic State's so-called Wilayat Khorasan and other terrorist groups. He said IS was using Afghanistan as a launching pad and aims to spread throughout Central Asia.
"There has been major progress against ISIS-K [IS-Khorasan] in Afghanistan... Effective operations by US/Coalition [and] Afghan security forces, as well as the Taliban, led to ISIS-K losing territory [and] fighters," Khalilzad said via Twitter on Tuesday.
Khalilzad added that hundreds of Khorasan fighters have surrendered. However, he pointed out that the terrorist group has not been eliminated but that this development "is real progress."
Earlier in November, First Deputy Chief of the Russian Government Staff Sergei Prikhodko said there are up to 10,000 Islamic State terrorists operating in Afghanistan, which contradicts the Pentagon's claims that the Islamic State only had a few thousand fighters in the country.
