Afghanistan’s ISIL chief killed by US airstrikes: officials

The top ISIL commander in Afghanistan has been killed by a U.S. air strike in the country's east, officials said on Saturday, the fourth former Taliban member who declared loyalty to the Middle East-based fighters to be assassinated within a week.

Hafez Saeed was the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS) said.

He was killed along with 30 other fighters as they gathered in Achin district of Nangarhar province late on Friday, the intelligence agency said. It gave no further details of the air strike.

Two ISIL-affiliated commanders in Afghanistan who said they were present when the strike happened confirmed Saeed's death to Agence France-Presse.

NATO ended its combat mission in Afghanistan in December, leaving local forces to battle the Taliban alone, but a residual force remains for training and counter-terrorism operations.

Saeed, a Pakistani, was among a small but increasing number of senior Taliban fighters who have switched allegiance to ISIL, which has seized territory in Iraq and Syria and inspired attacks worldwide.

The ISIL loyalists have been targets for U.S drone strikes in Afghanistan, which have killed three other ISIL commanders in the same area in the past week, including top commanders Shahidullah Shahid and Gul Zaman.

The U.S. military has expressed concern about the budding ISIL presence in Afghanistan — still struggling to quell the Taliban's insurgency — and is using its remaining military force in the country to prevent ISIL from turning into the powerful force that emerged after the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

A spokesman for U.S. military in Afghanistan, Col. Brian Tribus, confirmed on Saturday that “U.S. Forces conducted a precision strike in Achin District, Nangarhar Province, on July 10 against individuals threatening the force.”

After pushing out Taliban fighters, ISIL has in the past two months gained ground in several districts of Nangarhar province, which shares a long and porous border with lawless areas inside Pakistan.

Achin fell to the ISIL fighters last month after heavy clashes with the Afghan Taliban, which has warned ISIL to stay out of its territory. Both rival movements espouse a radical vision of Islamic sharia law, but each rejects the other's leadership.

Saeed was a senior commander in the Pakistani branch of the Taliban. He left and declared loyalty to ISIL in October 2014 after differences with the Taliban leadership.

Together with other ex-Taliban he declared the mountainous Tirah valley in northwestern Pakistan as his headquarters, but soon fled across the border to Nangarhar in Afghanistan when the Pakistani military launched an offensive on his base. 

Wire services