{"id":32454,"date":"2017-11-22T13:50:32","date_gmt":"2017-11-22T08:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tns.world\/?p=32454"},"modified":"2017-11-22T13:50:32","modified_gmt":"2017-11-22T08:50:32","slug":"us-conducts-airstrikes-on-opium-labs-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tns.world\/?p=32454","title":{"rendered":"US conducts airstrikes on opium labs in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK Nov 22 (TNS):<\/strong> The United States has conducted a series of airstrikes on opium-production plants in Afghanistan as part of a campaign targeting the Taliban’s $200 million-a-year drug trade, according to\u00a0the US media.<\/p>\n

The joint strikes by US and Afghan aircraft were aimed at drug facilities in Taliban-controlled areas in northern Helmand province, with three of the strikes occurring in Kajaki district, four in Musa Qala and one in Sangin on Sunday.<\/p>\n

General John Nicholson, the commander of the US operations in Afghanistan, said on Monday that B-52 bombers and F-22 warplanes took part in the strikes, the first such attacks under new authorizations granted by President Donald Trump to officials conducting the war in Afghanistan, the media said.<\/p>\n

“Heroin”s become a global issue,” General Nicholson said during a teleconference news briefing from Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

“These criminals living in Afghanistan who are closely linked to the Taliban are responsible for 85 per cent of the world”s opium.<\/p>\n

“He said that the campaign against the Taliban drug labs, which he said numbered about 400 to 500 across the country, would continue into the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

The US spends more than $8 billion to fight the drug trade.<\/p>\n

In one of the strikes a US B-52 used 2,000-pound bombs to destroy a facility and 50 barrels of opium, which General Nicholson said had a street value of millions of US dollars.<\/p>\n

He said that US forces had conducted hundreds of hours of surveillance and hundreds of analysts worked to identify the targets and minimize collateral damage.<\/p>\n

There are 13 major drug trafficking organisations in Afghanistan, General Nicholson said, seven of which are in Helmand province.<\/p>\n

Afghanistan”s President Ashraf Ghani announced the operation via Twitter saying Afghan forces supported by international troops “launched operations in Helmand to abolish opium processing labs” and that eight labs were destroyed.<\/p>\n

The new push against Taliban opium facilities comes in the wake of a new report by the UN Office on Drugs which recently estimated that opium production in Afghanistan had increased by 87 per cent in 2017<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK Nov 22 (TNS): The United States has conducted a series of airstrikes on opium-production plants in Afghanistan as part of a campaign targeting the Taliban’s $200 million-a-year drug trade, according to\u00a0the US media. The joint strikes by US and Afghan aircraft were aimed at drug facilities in Taliban-controlled areas in northern Helmand province, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,488],"tags":[589,159,111],"class_list":["post-32454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","category-new-york","tag-national","tag-new-york","tag-pakistan-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32456,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32454\/revisions\/32456"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}