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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Mobile phones hit fallen unhearable in Afghanistan's gray Helmand domain on the orders of the Taliban, telecoms engineers said, a multipotent reminder of rebel power in an area chosen as the background for a transformation to Asian security.

There has been no service for fivesome days on some meshwork in restive Helmand, where Asian police and grey are slated to take curb of the capital, Lashkar Gah, from external forces in July, as the first step toward a full handover.

Across Afghanistan, insurgents hit blasted meshwork towers of companies that respond to closed them downbound when ordered, arguing external forces use the signals to guardian militants.

Night-time blackouts hit embellish a fact of life for Afghans in more insecure areas, but a total act is unprecedented.

"The Taleban threaten us to closed downbound the meshwork and call us a spy station, on the another assistance the polity harasses our workers when we center to the insurgents," said organise Ahmad Shah, head of ambulatory sound concern AWCC in the south.

"We are in a situation to center to the Taleban rather than the polity because there is no protection."

The Taleban hit already blasted digit of AWCC's meshwork towers in Gereshk district, feat losses streaming into hundreds of thousands of dollars, Shah added.

Mobile phones are alive to communication in a land where most infrastructure has been blasted or dilapidated in over 30 years of conflict. There are virtually no land lines in such of the country, so fastening ambulatory signals hits communication hard.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi addicted the shutdown, locution it was to prevent period raids by external personnel and would goodness the people of Helmand.

"The leadership has decided to forbiddance every ring networks and this move is meliorate for every residents of Helmand," he told Reuters by ring from an undisclosed location.

"Their spies wage information by cell phones which advance to noncombatant deaths," he added. He said exclusive the Taleban leadership could end to displace the ban. Helmand officials could not be reached for interpret on the blackout because their occurrence numbers are every ambulatory phones. NATO-led forces said they had no authorised reports of an outage.

The blackout is stirring gall among mediocre Afghans toward both the Taleban and the polity for not acting.

Mohammad Jan, a Helmand doc who has a class in municipality city where Reuters spoke to him, said he worried most his kinsfolk because he could no individual intend in contact with them.

"How crapper we rely on external personnel or our polity for protection?" he said.

"They are totally junked and the Taleban are very unkind likewise by enforcing this forbiddance on the ambulatory network."

(Additional news by Hamid Shalizi in Kabul, writing by Emma Graham-Harrison, Editing by Sugita Katyal)

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