The shadow provincial governor of the Taliban group for northern Sar-e-Pul province was killed during an operation by the Afghan security forces.

“Last night, Afghan National Civil Order Police launched a special clearance operation to clear armed Taliban from Aadrang Barghali region, Sar-e-Pul city of Sar-ePul province,” the Ministry of Interior (MoI) said on Wednesday afternoon.

MoI further added “As a result of this operation, 11 armed Taliban including Taliban’s so-called governor for Sar-e-Pul province were killed.”

According to MoI, the so-called governor Najibullah known as Ataullah was involved in many terrorist and destructive activities in Sar-e-Pul province.

“After eliminating this group the security situation in this province is expected to improve,” MoI added.

The Taliban militants group has not commented regarding the report so far.

The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the group announced its spring offensive in mid-April this year and since then the group has staged numerous attacks across the country.

The announcement of the spring offensive by the Taliban group forced the Afghan forces to launch an annual counter-terrorism operation with the security officials saying the main target of the annual ‘Shafaq’ operation is to eliminate the top leaders of the anti-government armed militant groups.