WATCH: Afghan Special Forces Take Out Islamic State Fighters

Cover Image: Islamic State fighters killed in raid (Picture: DVIDS) 

Afghanistan Special Forces have killed Islamic State fighters in a nighttime raid.

The US Department of Defense released footage of the operation, which took place at a strategic location for IS in the centre of Darzab, in Jowzjan on 11 April.

In Afghanistan, the Islamic State group is known as IS-K.

It comes six days after the IS-K leader, Qari Hekmatullah, and his bodyguard were killed by a US airstrike.

General John Nicholson, an Afghanistan commander for the U.S. Forces said: 

“The recent Afghan and U.S. special operations raid will lead to the tactical defeat of IS-K in northern Afghanistan.” 

Mr Nicholson added: “Pockets of former Taliban fighters may claim allegiance to IS-K, but they are isolated and losing."

"We have them on the defensive. They will not win.”

Since the start of this year, Afghan and U.S. forces have killed 90 IS-K fighters, with the majority being in Darzab. 

A series of ASSF and U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) counterterrorism operations focused on dismantling IS-K leadership.

The group has since appointed a new leader in Northern Afghanistan, Mawlavi Habibul Rahman, a native Uzbek.

Also, like Hekmatullah, Rahman has had intermittent ties to both the Taliban and Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

Last month, ASSF and U.S. Special Forces killed an IS-K platoon commander and another fighter during a partnered nighttime raid in Mughul. Four days earlier they eliminated four IS-K fighters in Darzab.

On the evening of 16 March, an ASSF nighttime raid on the IS-K headquarters in Jowzjan resulted in the death of another 13 fighters.

Afghan forces captured Omair and Abu Samaya’s predecessor Khitab Aka, IS-K’s former head facilitator of foreign fighters in Jowzjan, on 28 January.