A view of the mountains from a military plane travelling from Lashkar Gah to Kandahar airport. At the time, the Afghan Army was struggling to contain the Taliban advance toward the main urban center.
Onlookers observe the site of an ISIS attack that killed 32 people and wounded more than 80 in a Shia neighborhood on March 6, 2020. The attack came just days after the signing of a peace deal between the U.S. and the Taliban. The Islamic State opposed the peace efforts by the Taliban and still carried out terrorist attacks, mostly targeting ethnic Hazara and Shiite minorities.
A girl stands at the entrance of her family’s mud house in the Hussain Khail informal settlement. Her uncle and brother were killed in their compound during an airstrike in the village of Chardara. Survivors were trapped in the crossfire between the Taliban and the Afghan Army for an entire day before they were evacuated to Kabul during a lull in the fighting. The family never returned to their house after the incident.
The bazar of Sangin is heavily damaged by fighting that ravaged this area during the years of the US occupation. Towns like this in Helmand province have seen many civilian casualties.
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