At least 20 Taliban killed in major Afghan offensive

Message-Id: <20100213213026.2814730733D1@node2.byetcluster.com> Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 16:30:26 -0500 (EST) From: root@admin2.byetcluster.com (root) MARJAH: Thousands of US-led personnel hardback by helicopters Saturday stormed an Islamist defence in southern Afghanistan in NATO''s large activeness since the Taleban regime''s overthrow in New 2001. US Marines led the calculate on Marjah, a municipality of 80,000 in the central Helmand River depression dominated for eld by militants and take traffickers in the prototypal field test of President Barack Obama''s newborn inflate policy. US, nation and Asian soldiers dropped into Marjah from helicopters before dawn, directly coming low blast and claiming their prototypal Taleban victims within hours, Asian grey and Marines officers said. Operation Mushtarak ("together" in Dari), as the move involving 15,000 personnel is known, aims to clear the Atlantic of Taleban and re-establish Asian rule and subject services, Helmand Governor Mohammad Gulab Mangal said. British forces suffered their prototypal accident of the activeness when a soldier was killed in an explosion patch on a vehicle guard in Helmand province''s Nad-e-Ali area, Britain''s Defence Ministry said in London. NATO''s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said fivesome external soldiers died on Saturday in the south of Afghanistan, three of them US troops, but did not say if they had been participating in the Marjah attack. At small 20 Taleban fighters were killed in the prototypal hours of the assault, said General Sher Mohammad Zazai, man of the operation''s Asian troops. "So far, we hit killed 20 armed contestant fighters. Eleven others hit been detained," he said, adding they were killed in removed engagements. Afghan Defence Minister Abdul Raheem Wardak said the activeness was making careful advancement because the Atlantic had been alcoholic with noxious improvised exploding devices (IEDs), which can be nearly impossible to detect. "The Atlantic has been heavily mined, that''s why we are moving so slowly," Wardak told reporters in Kabul. NATO commanders were yet satisfied with the operation''s advancement thusly far, according to a grownup nation expeditionary spokesman. The commanders were "very pleased with how it has gone," Major General Gordon Messenger told a briefing in London. "The key neutral has been secured," he said, explaining that the important aims for nation personnel were to bonded the population centres and installations much as personnel stations in the the Chah-e Anjir Triangle north of Marjah. There had been some "sporadic fighting," but the Taleban appeared to be "confused and disjointed" and "have not been able to place up a coherent response," Messenger said. Mushtarak is the prototypal field move on a Taleban defence since Obama announced in Dec that he was sending an additional 30,000 soldiers to Afghanistan in 2010. The US and NATO already hit 113,000 personnel in the country battling the insurgents. NATO has committed added 10,000, transfer the amount to more than 150,000 by August. Mushtarak puts into practice the newborn US-led counter-insurgency strategy combining the expeditionary neutral of eradicating the Taleban with the need to change their sort of disagreeable curb with the noncombatant authority of Kabul. The battle for Marjah, an rural plain that is the maker of most of the world''s opium, is the prototypal actual test of the strategy devised by US General discoverer McChrystal, man of external forces in Afghanistan. Helmand governor Mangal said a government-in-waiting will running in behindhand the expeditionary to re-establish official curb and subject services. Wardak said the activeness is the prototypal of its category against the insurgents -- and NATO officials say it is the large since the insurgency began mass the fall of the Taliban''s 1996-2001 regime. In the primeval phases of the activeness Chinook helicopters filled the pre-dawn skies as personnel led by US Marines were dropped into Marjah ahead of ground forces, a US Marines officer said. "At 0230 this farewell (2200 GMT), helicopters inserted compounded forces into Marjah town," said Lieutenant Josh Diddams, spokesman for the US Marines at Taskforce Leatherneck in Helmand. He confirmed personnel had become low blast from Taleban fighters, believed to sort 400-1,000. Afghan President Hamid Karzai warned the personnel to do everything doable to refrain harming civilians, a huffy supply among war-weary Afghans. Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi, who earlier claimed casualties among the offensive forces, said: "We''re attractive them in hit-and-run attacks." ISAF said the compounded force includes the Asian grey and police, with US Marines and grey hardback by nation forces. Danish, Esthonian and Canadian personnel are also involved.
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