KABUL, Afghanistan — U.S. Special Forces successfully freed dozens of Afghan security personnel from a Taliban prison during a joint operation with local forces, American military officials said Friday.
Ground troops from the Afghan Special Security Forces and the U.S. Special Mission Wing conducted a helicopter assault mission in the Nawzad district of Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, the U.S. military said in a news release.
Afghan military spokesman Gen Dawlat Waziri said over 60 prisoners — including Afghan security personnel, policemen and civilians — were freed in the operation.
The U.S. statement said 40 Afghan security personnel had been freed.
"The liberated prisoners were released to the Ministry of Defense authorities to receive medical care. The information on their initial capture is not known," it said.
Waziri said more information on the freed prisoners would be released later.
Jim MiklaszewskiJim Miklaszewski is the chief Pentagon correspondent for NBC News. On 9/11, he was the first at the scene to report that the Pentagon had been attacked and has since led the network's coverage of the war in Afghanistan.
Since joining NBC in 1985, Miklaszewski was a White House correspondent during the Clinton and Bush administrations, covering President Clinton's transition from Little Rock, his many trips abroad including Moscow and the Middle East and his reelection. He was also an NBC floor reporter at the Democratic and Republican conventions in 1996 and 2000.
In the Bush White House, Miklaszewski reported on the Gulf War with Iraq, summits with Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin and the Bush reelection campaign in 1992.
Miklaszewski has logged considerable foreign experience with battlefront coverage of wars in Lebanon, El Salvador and the Falkland Islands. He also covered the United States air raid on Libya, and the "tanker wars" in the Persian Gulf.
Fazul RahimRahim joined the NBC News Kabul Bureau team in December 2013. He has extensively covered events in Afghanistan since 2001, and is a former Afghanistan Bureau Chief for CBS News. While with CBS, he co-produced reports for "The CBS Evening News" and "60 Minutes."
Alastair Jamieson contributed.
