The man who claims to have taken the decisive shot that killed terrorist leader Osama bin Laden blasted a peace deal brokered with the Taliban that fell apart amid renewed fighting in Afghanistan.
Robert O’Neill celebrated a U.S. airstrike against Taliban fighters on Wednesday after the group attacked and killed 25 Afghan soldiers at the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces checkpoint in Helmand.
“We just crushed the taliban today,” he tweeted. “F— the peace deal.”
O’Neill is known for his fiery and oftentimes controversial remarks. After an American drone strike killed top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January, O’Neill mocked a stampede that killed dozens as Soleimani’s body was paraded through the streets during a state-run funeral.
United States and Taliban negotiators reached the temporary peace deal on Saturday in the Qatari capital of Doha with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo witnessing the signing. American officials had hoped the deal could lead to a withdrawal of U.S. troops from the region while stimulating intra-Afghan negations.
The pact also called for reduced Taliban violence in Afghanistan, but Afghan provincial police spokesman Mohammad Zaman Hamdard told AFP that he had since “witnessed the most intense Taliban attacks in Helmand” in the past two days.
Col. Sonny Leggett, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said on Wednesday that the Taliban launched 43 attacks across Afghanistan and called on Taliban leaders to “stop needless attacks and uphold their commitments.” The Taliban attacks began only hours after President Trump spoke with Taliban chief negotiator Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar by phone.
Even before the attacks, the peace deal faced a major setback when Afghan President Ashraf Ghani rejected a key part that calls for the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners in the country in exchange for 1,000 captives of the Afghan government.
