At least ten Afghan soldiers, who were kept captive by the Taliban for up to six years, were released by the insurgents as a \u201cgoodwill gesture\u201d, a government official said.<\/p>\n
Mohammad Yaseen Khan, the governor of southern Helmand province, said the International Committee of Red Cross facilitated the release of the Afghan soldiers from the Taliban captivity.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters alongside the released soldiers in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, Khan said the Afghan government hails such positive steps.<\/p>\n
\u201cEfforts are also underway to ensure safe release of many civilians from Taliban\u2019s custody,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Islam Uddin, one of the released captives, said he spent more than two harsh years under Taliban\u2019s captivity, adding he is pleased to get his liberty back.<\/p>\n
Zalmay Khalilzad, Washington\u2019s top peace negotiator for Afghanistan, also hailed the release of 10 Afghan soldiers by the Taliban as a positive step towards peace in the country.<\/p>\n
The release came days after a prisoner swap of three key Taliban commanders for two foreign professors at the American University of Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
The U.S. President Donald Trump hailed the prison swap.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe join families of Kevin King & Tim Weeks in celebrating their release from Taliban captivity. Thanks to President Ghani for his courageous support. Let\u2019s hope this leads to more good things on the peace front like a ceasefire that will help end this long war. Proud of my team\u201d, he said in a Twitter post on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At least ten Afghan soldiers, who were kept captive by the Taliban for up to six years, were released by the insurgents as a \u201cgoodwill gesture\u201d, a government official said. Mohammad Yaseen Khan, the governor of southern Helmand province, said the International Committee of Red Cross facilitated the release of the Afghan soldiers from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":12085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12084"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12086,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12084\/revisions\/12086"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}