US Marines came under attack from insurgents armed with sniper guns and rocket-propelled grenades as they geared up yesterday to overwhelm a Taliban bastion in Afghanistan.
Thousands of Marines along with foreign and Afghan soldiers are taking up position around the town of Marjah in Helmand Province, which officials say is one of the last areas of the province under Taliban control.
The flow of residents fleeing the imminent offensive has slowed, provincial officials said, after loaded-down cars, trucks, tractors and buses clogged roads from Marjah to provincial capital Lashkah Gar for days.
PHOTO: AFP
“We have announced and told people in Marjah not to leave their houses as our operation is well planned and designed to target the enemy,” said Daud Ahmadi, spokesman for Helmand Governor Mohammad Gulab Mangal.
“Civilians will not be harmed,” he said.
Another 75 families had left Marjah, on top of 164 families who left earlier, the spokesman said. Other officials have said more than 400 families have fled.
The operation, expected to begin in days, will be the biggest push since US President Barack Obama announced a new surge of troops to Afghanistan and one of the biggest since the 2001 US-led invasion defeated the Taliban regime.
It is seen as a key test of a comprehensive counter-insurgency strategy that aims to follow up what officials predict will be a decisive military victory by establishing Afghan government control.
But Taliban fighters appear defiant in the face of the enormous firepower being amassed in the region, where they have held sway for years in tandem with drug traffickers.
On the northeastern edge of Marjah, a photographer said US Marines arrived by helicopter at a deserted junction and immediately came under sniper fire from insurgents.
The Marines encampment, reinforced with sandbags, also came under rocket fire. US Cobra helicopters were called in to attack Taliban positions, the photographer said.
The Marines searched houses and compounds for weapons and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and evacuated residents from the few homes still occupied.
NATO forces dropped leaflets on the area warning of the fight to come, to give residents and insurgents time to flee and avoid a battle, officials said.
Mark Sedwill, NATO’s senior civilian representative in Afghanistan, said the US-led alliance hoped the operation would proceed “swiftly and with as little incident as possible”.
“But this very much depends on the conduct of people who are in Marjah at the moment and their choices about whether to resist or to lay down their weapons and, as the government has offered them, come over under the sovereignty of the legitimate authorities,” he told reporters.
“People need to be under no illusion — this operation is going to succeed, we are going to bring Afghan government sovereignty to this area,” he said.
“The only question is are the people who have been controlling the area going to accept that?” he said, adding that the message to residents was to “keep your heads down.”
AVALANCHE
In other news, the death toll from massive avalanches that blocked a mountain pass north of Kabul soared to 157, as hundreds more remained trapped in their snowbound vehicles, Afghan officials said yesterday.
Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said rescuers have recovered 157 bodies from the Salang Pass over the past two days.
The number of deaths had more than doubled from the last reported figure of 64 a day earlier, as rescue teams scrambled to reach survivors.
At a press conference in Kabul, Bashary said 2.5km of road have been cleared for ambulances, bulldozers and other road-clearing equipment to get through.
About 2,600 people have been rescued so far, he said.
A series of avalanches that were triggered on Monday along the 3,800m pass closed off roads and stranded hundreds of people in snowbound vehicles.
Some of the victims were found frozen to death inside their vehicles, while in other cases, their bodies were strewn along the road, he said.
More than two dozen avalanches had poured tonnes of snow and ice on the pass, blocking 3.5km of road and burying hundreds of vehicles.
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