KABUL - An air raid last Sunday on Badakhshan set a record for the number of precision-guided munitions launched at one time from a B-52 bomber, the US military said.
The US military says it carried out a series of punishing bombings last weekend of Taliban militant camps that also support a separatist Chinese terror group.
A bombing raid last Sunday on a region bordering China and Tajikistan set a record for the number of precision-guided munitions launched at one time from a B-52 bomber, according to Air Force Maj. Gen. James Hecker, who spoke to reporters at the Pentagon in a video teleconference from Kabul on Wednesday.
NBC reported the B-52 — a Cold War workhorse — had recently been modified to carry more munitions, the military said in a statement.
The camps in remote Badakhshan province supported Taliban operations within Afghanistan and by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement — set up by members of China's minority Uighur community — on the border region with China and Tajikistan, the military said.
"There will be no safe haven for any terrorist group," Gen. John Nicholson, the head of US Forces in Afghanistan, said in a statement Thursday.
“We continue to hunt them across the country.”
Hecker said the strikes "support Afghanistan in reassuring its neighbors that it is not a safe sanctuary for terrorists who want to carry out cross border operations."
According to NBC Hecker added that the destruction of the training facilities would prevent "terrorists from planning any acts near the border with China and Tajikistan."
China blames violence in its far-western Xinjiang region, home to some 10 million Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority, on Islamist extremists and separatists, some of whom it has long said have links to groups outside the country. Rights groups and Uighur exiles counter that unrest is due more to Uighur frustration at Chinese controls on their culture and religion. China denies any repression.   (Tolo news)