fighters were killed and 50 others wounded in a joint security operation by Afghan forces in Afghanistan’s western Herat province, said officials on Saturday. The provincial governor’s spokesman, Jilani Farhad told media that the operation was aimed at clearing and preventing war crimes in the Shindand district of Herat. Personnel from the Afghan National Army (ANA), the National Directorate of Security (NDS), police, commando and air force are taking part in the still in progress operation. At least 41 rebels were killed and more than 50 were wounded during the offensive that led to the destruction of 15 motorcycles, eight vehicles, four machine guns, three rockets and other ammunition and equipment, the official claimed. According to local media, the operation was kicked off following the infighting between two Taleban factions in Shindand district. The security operation came at a time when Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) of Afghanistan, Pakistan, United States and China have called to facilitate direct peace talks with Taleban and Afghan government. Meanwhile, “It was God’s will”, says Mohammed Ashraf, a tear rolling down his weathered face as he looks at the lifeless bodies of five male relatives, brought back to Kabul after they drowned trying to reach Europe.

The coffins sit open in the courtyard of the family home in Kart-e-Seh, a middle-class neighbourhood in the Afghan capital, the bodies of four boys and one older man wrapped in black material but their faces exposed. One coffin is notably smaller than the others. It belongs to Faiz, who was just nine months old when he drowned in the Aegean Sea last week along with nine other members of his family. “You can see that the bodies are being washed now,” says Ashraf, a cousin of the family, as half a dozen men tend to the corpses in an Islamic funeral rite.

One, seemingly at the end of his strength, murmurs a prayer. Another bites into his scarf to suppress a sob. Only men are allowed to participate in this ceremony for their male relatives. Two houses along, the women of the family are doing the same for the five women and girls who drowned on the same crossing between Turkey and Greece. Of the members of the Skanderi family who attempted the voyage, only the father of the five children who drowned has survived. “He is in a hospital in Turkey,” Ashraf explains. “We are all from the same village, from the same neighbourhood.

We grew up together,” he says as the tears begin to flow again. The scene reveals the tragic human story behind statistics from the International Organization for Migration showing that between January and mid-February alone, 320 people died crossing the Aegean. More than 130,000 people have travelled to Greece via Turkey since the start of the year, according to the same group, most of them Afghans, Syrians and Iraqis fleeing conflict and a bleak economic climate. Of those, 42,000 are stuck in Greece, a series of border closures in the Balkans blocking them from continuing further into Western Europe. “Life is very hard in Kabul. That’s the reason why they left. I work in a hotel-restaurant and the money is too tight,” says Atiqullah, a cousin of the family who did not wish to give his full name.